30 July 2023
Wow! That anti-anxiety medicine certainly does something. Not sure about the anxiety part but I slept until 8:30 this morning. Since I ran all my errands yesterday, it wasn’t a big deal to sleep that late. I’m usually a morning person but looks like I getting to be more of a late morning person these days.
As usual, we are under a heat warning in Fort Lauderdale. We only missed two days without heat warnings in July (both after afternoon rain storms) and we are projected to be the same tomorrow to finish out the month. The air conditioners in Florida are working overtime.
My life has settled into a routine of emptying drain bulbs in the morning, reading in the afternoons, and lately, watching the nine part series on baseball by Ken Burns in the evening. I never was much of a baseball fan until I went to college and had free tickets to Ole Miss baseball games. It was a great way to spend the afternoon with a coke, hotdog, and listening to the insults the crowd hurled at the umps.
The Ken Burns series seems to me to be a little disjointed but I finally caught on that the reason there are nine episodes is because there are nine innings in baseball. I’m a little slow on the uptake most of the time. In one of the series, one of their interviewees said this was the only sport that doesn’t have a clock associated with it, unlike football, soccer, etc. Apparently that has gone by the wayside in that baseball has now instigated a pitching clock. I’m only 29 years late in watching this series by Burns. Better late than never.
I wish I felt better. Still a little depressed but I assume some of that is living with this drain. It was explained to me that the drain would probably be in place one to two weeks. I’m now at 17 days and counting. Tomorrow I meet again with Dr. Burgers for another assessment of the drain but in reality, the volume of blood and the redness hasn’t changed in 17 days so I hold no great hope of getting rid of it. I need to be rid of it by August 21 since that’s the first day of my new chemotherapy routine.
Another reason for the depression is the idea that I will have one whole year of chemotherapy. The only caveat this time is it will be two drugs that supposedly doesn’t have the same after effects of my first four drug routine that ended up with me in the hospital.
The only other exciting news is my sister-in-law butt dialed me this morning. Unusual for them, they were up around 10:30. They normally sleep in much later. Butt dials are always strange. I think everyone must have much worse hearing that I do. When I butt dial someone, I can hear them in the background but when people butt dial me, no one hears me saying “Hello!” I also try to hang up pretty quickly when I realize it is a butt dial because I don’t want to overhear peoples’ conversations.
__________
Heliconias vs Haliconias.
When I moved to Florida, someone once told me the plants I had in my yard were of two different names: heliconias and heliconias. I should have known better. The plant in the photo above is a variety of Heliconia bahai.
The showiest part of the plant are the large, colorful bracts. In the photo above you can see some of the tiny flowers peeking out from the bracts. Heliconias are mostly found in tropical South America. When I’m entertaining some friends, I often cut some of the leaf stalks and bring them inside and place them in a large urn-like vase in the living room to add a little greenery.
This particular species was named in honor of King Kameakamea of Hawaii.
This was the plant that someone told me was a haliconia. Like I said before, I’m a little slow on the uptake sometimes but I eventually get things right. These grow in my front yard while Heliconia bahai grows in my back yard and side yards. I use the parakeet flower for their blooms. You do have to be careful with both plants because the bracts collect water (as do the bases of the leaves) and mosquitoes love to lay eggs in there to hatch into larvae and then into the nasty bloodsuckers they are.
BONAP (Biota of North America Program) lists only one species in the U.S. (Florida) and it is native to Mexico and has become naturalized in Florida. The family (Heliconiaceae) is closely related to the banana family and the ginger family of plants. These are monocots which means their flower parts are typically in 3’s or mutiples of 3’s, parallel venation of leaves, scattered vascular bundles and with diffuse root systems.
I spend a great deal of time all year keeping these things under control and getting rid of dead leaves. Every two weeks I generally can fill up a yard waste container with their dead leaves. On occasions I have cut down all three stands down to the ground but their underground rhizomes bring them right back. They certainly add a little color to the front yard (parakeet flowers) and provide me with some foliage for the house (Heliconia bahai). I guess it’s worth the effort to keep the trimmed and cleaned out. I should also mention that iguanas use them to hide from me. I’ll start chasing one and they immediately go into the “forest” of heliconias.
Stay tuned!
I have always been a fan of the big heliconias—their variety and showy flowers are unique. I got rid of mine because they are as ubiquitous as bananas—impossible to control. Little heliconias are easier to manage and showy, too. I never grew bird of paradise plants, but their flowers are the mst showy—to me. My ceibas are about to bloom. Do you need one to replace your Bismarck palm?