I am very happy that you have gotten so many reblooming, and Kay, too. Just about all of mine rebloomed last year and the year before as well, but, this year, only 2 that rebloomed. aesthetic ballet rebloomed and beautiful edging rebloomed and still going strong. Shes a real work horse when it comes to putting out blooms, and Last Reward is still sending out blooms,its just a late bloomer,and Marietta Surprise is still throwing out blooms every day.maybe next year will be better year for blooms. jean

Freshair, glad you enjoyed it. Carrie, how nice to have an abundance of berries for the birds. The resident mockingbirds here eat the berries from my Youpon holly trees all winter. One dry year when the youpons didn't produce berries I fed the mockingbirds dried fruits like raisons and cranberries. Wow Carrie and Kathy -- sounds like signs of spring are popping up already with your early blooming daffodil and iris! My larkspur seedlings and columbines are coming along nicely with the recent rains, but that's about it for new stuff, not counting the weeds of course. How about the rest of you? You are welcome to add any photos to this thread or start a new one. We need all the encouragment we can get to make it through these next few weeks of winter :-)

Thank you, everyone! I do think it's scale (warning: very last photo will be an icky picture of my scrapings—this is as close as I could get, floral :T ). They came off like flakes with little weight, actually, with the nudge of a plastic knife. I immediately sprayed both the inside of its shell and where it had been attached to the tree in case crawlers were coming out in a frenzy from either. Litterbuggy, to provide more info (that pics alone can't provide!): We will try the chopstick! We had previously been sticking a finger in / using a meter. The potting mix isn't typical peat moss + perlite; it's fast-draining succulent mix with perlite. Does this look coarse enough? We live in Orange County so it's desert-dry; I mist it some mornings. Our temperature stays around 78°F with the AC off while we're gone. Air doesn't move much. And our tap water is indeed pretty hard. Still have little budding green shoots on nearly every stem. Most leaf stems are still upright; only some droop, especially this one trunk stem: My two top concerns now... I'm now worried every little brown speck on the trunk is scale... Should I be? The tops of each trunk/stem are dark; since every one was that way (and has been for a while), it didn't occur to me that might be unhealthy. Is that of great concern? Gross photo alert. It's so dark you can't really see much...

Should I be worried? I got this Prayer Plant three weeks ago and it had like two or three of these brown spots but now it has a couple more I believe.