Who says winter has to be dreary?

Thanks to Jack Miller (wife, Lee is in the Health Care Center) we have three Tropical Hibiscus blooming in the building. Hibiscuses were always one of the Millers' favorite plants and Jack has continued the tradition. He plants the specimen he buys each year, pot and all, in the back yard and the blooms are beautiful all summer. Since they are of the tropical variety, rather than hardy, they can't live outside through the winter so he has been donating them here and getting a new one each year. Easy enough, since all you have to do is pull the pot out of the ground -- and Lee can enjoy them with us. The latest is a soft red/pink variety near the aquarium in Assisted Living. The other two are in the Crossroads Ice Cream Parlor and they have orange blossoms. They spent the summer on the City View Terrace. Father Boyce gave one a good haircut before we brought it in since it had gotten so top heavy it kept blowing over.

Our Peacocks are growing up. They're beginning to look like the elegant birds they're meant to be - if we could just see them. They continue to live in the Reflections Pond Courtyard but unless you're looking for them in the morning or evening they stay mostly behind the bushes. Still not old enough to know if we have a cock or not. Art Rubin (Doris lives here) says the first clue is that we shall see some feathers of contrasting color around the neck. They can fly and when startled have gone over the roof. The white one ended up in the same courtyard with our little French Silky Rooster and boy! did the rooster take offense!! He's about a third the size of the peacock until he got himself all puffed up and ended up “treeing” the peacock. Maintenance had to come to the rescue.

We have had another guardian angel join our St. Simeon's family. Gabrielle Buck in Assisted Living moved in recently and immediately started

The Garden Club outing for November was our annual gardening “pilgrimage” to Cohlmia's/Binding Stevens Nursery Center. For indoor Christmas spirit these are two places that definitely do it up right. Don't miss the trip next year if you have never been.

What a wonderful fall we have had. All the ingredients must have come together just right for the trees to have such beautiful colors. And doing their best ever were the Bradford Pears. We have one here in the Reflections Courtyard and, I think it showed leaves of five different colors at one time.

The fish in our pond are “sleeping” at the bottom until spring when they'll again appear looking for Ruth Anderson and their first meal in months! There's nothing delicate about how the Koi eat - particularly one of ours just moves across the surface of the water like a vacuum cleaner. Did you know that to taper them off from eating we fed them cheerios for a while - wisdom courtesy of Linda and Jim Furman.

Also hibernating are our tortoises.This was the first year that we hatched babies (about the size of a silver dollar by the end of the summer) and though they probably would have been fine outside over the winter they were just too cute to take the chance so have gone home with several kind employees (Sabrina Kirby, Kum Yon Jones and Audra Lamm) to make sure that they survive to grow up and maybe come visit us again.