Forever Weekend Farm: February 2019

HAPPY FEBRUARY!

Ah! The month of love! At this time in our lives, Greg and I celebrate every loving day.

We are so much wiser now! But it is the season of Valentine love, so we put our heads together to come up with a practical and useful Gift for each other. Hurricanes are always on our mind and Forever Weekend Farm has endured the onslaught of 6 such storms since 2000. Mother Nature gave us a break in 2018--No hurricane or major storms hit the farm last year. We still picked up quite a bit of palm debris from summer thunderstorms, but felt lucky that the beautiful palm hammock was not compromised from another treacherous storm. It had another year to grow taller and stronger. We love this piece of old Florida, but we grow weary picking up her palm fronds and palm debris. It seems to be a daily back breaking chore.

We came up with a great idea!

Let's talk to a tree company about removing some old decaying palms, a dead palm, a few messy strangler figs, and trim up the towering sabal palms before the 2019 Hurricane Season.

Happy Valentine's Day to us!

We hired an arborist!

WHAT A TEAM!!!

Some pictures of our beautiful palm hammock.

I have several palms with an array of gorgeous orchids that are attached to the rough palm bark.
Several of the towering palms lean precariously over the cottage.

A rare bearded fern has found a home in the palm boots

Every Spring Mama and Papa owl return to nest in the hammock.
This is last year's babies.

We spend our weekends burning fallen palm debris!!!

This is what the koi pond looks like after a wind storm!

Huge wasp nest blown off the roof

Daily chore of cleaning up debris and putting it in fire pit

But it sure is beautiful to gaze
up into these starbursts of palms heads
-especially on a moon lite night

And we reap some sweet rewards
from the coconut palms

And it always feels good after a hard days work--
even if is only 8 am!

The Arborist is coming!

The tree guy was set to come assess our trees. The days before he was to arrive we had some long discussions on what trees need to be removed and what trees need trimming. I love my trees, and do not want to part with any of them. Greg is practical and realistic and worries about the dead trees and palms leaning over the house. Hmmmmmm...........
Saturday morning I jump out of bed realizing Greg is already outside discussing tree removal with our new tree man. I look out the window and see a roll of red tape being tied around a tree. A bad case of bed head and wrinkled pillowcase face did not stop me from running outside to join the discussion. My arms wrapped around my "ole lady" flannel nightie, I am almost sprinting to join them.
And I hear Greg say,
"Dang, here comes the Tree Hugger!
LOL