77F and the wind is steady from the south at 15mph gusting near 30. The wind will turn and the temperature is expected to drop to 40 tonight and under 30 Christmas night.
So of course Karen and I went out and bought a raft of houseplants! Something on Facebook caught Karen's eye and she noticed that The Peacock Cottage is just up the road in Ocala. Since Christmas isn't the massive involved endeavor this year that it often has been we ended up with everything done this morning and decided to visit.
This shop is truly a plant geek's dream. They have a wide variety of species, genera, and families plus many many succulents and terrarium plants. Many of the plants are rare or uncommon and all are choice. You can see what we chose: Philodendron 'Birkin', Calathea 'White Fursion' (they had many calathea including others I wasn't familiar with), pothos 'Pearls 'n Jade', Sansieveria 'Samurai', those two colorful tillandsias, several African Violets, and some begonias. We won't go back for a while, but I've already started a list Right now I've got to be sure that these, and our other tender tropicals are inside by tomorrow night.
We traded a few retail plant stories with the owners and found out they've been there for 5 years and started by focusing on African Violets. I found them to be charming and knowledgeable which is a good combination. Plus the plant geek thing! I should say that I'm not being paid for this. Never have been on this blog. My compliments are completely uncolicited
