Thursday February 19th 2026

It turns out that the freeze at the beginning of the month did some serious damage to all of my plants. At first I thought only my bougainvillea took a light hit. I showed a picture in my February 5th blog entry. https://robsramblingroadtrip.com/2026/02/05/weather-wimp/ Since then it became clear that any return was going to come from the base. All of the green leaves and purple blossoms were gone.

Over the last couple of days I’ve cut the plant back. It is not a simple task. The branches run in every direction to form an interlocking grid that you need to get the cutters through. When you add in the sharp spikes along the stems it becomes a painful task. Even with heavy gloves the bush has drawn blood more than a few times. The remaining challenge is getting the cut out brush to the parks dumpster. Loading it into the back of my SUV doesn’t sound fun.

The avocado tree in front of my unit also shows signs of distress. It has lost the majority of its leaves. I look forward to getting rid of this one. It blocks my view up the road and is generally a dirty tree. I’ve been looking at various hibiscus plants as replacements for a year now. One other semi tropical in appearance plant in the back yard has nothing but dead leaves now. I don’t know what it is, but it will probably be replaced soon.