Death and life in the garden

I was at my potting bench this afternoon when a commotion at the top of a coconut palm caused me to turn just in time to see birds scattering and a broad-winged hawk flying off with a victim in its talons. Small, downy feathers drifted to the ground.

This morning, there was a dead Muscovy duck in the water that looked like part of it's underside had been ripped off. I'm wondering if there's a gator or a croc back in the lake. I haven't seen any ducklings for a while, which adds to my suspicions.

The effects of the long cold spell continue. The cold chilled the waters deep enough to cause a massive fish die-off, and for a while the stench of decay wafted up from the canal where dead fish -- and iguanas -- floated past.

It also stayed too cold for the iguanas to revive. I haven't seen the monster at the top of his tree since the freeze. Vultures are flying low, spoiled for choice of dinner. Much as I regret the loss of life, gardens around South Florida will benefit from the reduction in their numbers.

Coconut fronds have turned brown and continue to drop in large numbers, but I don't think that the palms themselves will die. Before a palms drops a frond, it pulls out the nutrients, leaving a dry, brown skeleton to fall. In a healthy palm, the lower fronds die first, as is the case here.  Even so, they're still heavy and they can damage the plants below. Last week, a frond split the trunk of a prized croton.

But enough of the gloomy news;  the Clerondendron quadriloculare, the starburst or shooting star clerodendron (below), is in flower, and orchids and bromeliads are about to bloom, too. Plus, I heard a mockingbird singing its heart out the other day. Twitterpating 2010 has begun!

Raining iguanas? Really!

To paraphrase humorist Dave Barry, "I was not making it up." The Herald finally got around to putting something on the Web. Here's the video.

It's raining .... iguanas??

The AP has a story about the cold in the South, ending with a couple of paragraphs about iguanas, stupefied by the cold, falling out of trees. It happens most years in these parts. It's one of those things that goes with cold weather and always makes us laugh. (Well, they don't belong here, after all.)

A couple of years ago, one of The Herald's photographers had been dispatched to take pix and he came back with a bright green one, about 14" long, in his pocket. It was just beginning to revive in the warm newsroom.

I forgot to check the neighborhood this morning for any on the ground, but in the meantime, here's a picture of the monster that lives on the other side of the canal where he suns himself at the top of a tree and wards off all rivals.