Stil here

[turtlemike]

  Been to busy to post lately.  I've been bringing in the tropicals and floating them in the greenhouse to shrink them for winter, at least the ones I don't have tubers for. 

  Things have pretty much quit blooming around here and I am building Skippy filters for my seedling pools and my indoor inter sub-generic seedling tubs.

  A few late season pics to add some color to your life, besides the changing leaves.

  First two pics are of William Maclane and a red flare seedling that I keep around. The next pic is sunfire still open with the sun setting on it.  next is Sunfire blooming later than Texas Dawn .

  I have over 600 hardy x night bloomer seeds from this year.  Mostly using pollen from my purple night bloomer. They are sprouting now and should be very interesting and fun to grow. Who knows what that will produce. I'm already looking forward to next spring !

[water_sprite]

Beautiful pictures as always! 

[Jerry]

Spectacular!

I saw a pond at big shopping center, I will take pix.  They had to have 200 RES at least. hwy had no objections to the crowd. I feel I could have touched them.  Mine are so shy.

[turtlemike]

  Jerry, some are way more shy than others it's a personality thing  My first RES that showed up at my pond is a total sweet heart except she is shy when she is sunning. if you catch her and pick her up she doesn't struggle or bite or scratch, she just enjoys the view of the pond she gets from up high.  one of her daughters is as mean as a pit bull and looks like one, with a short face and she is as dangerous as a snapping turtle and is always trying to bite me if I pick her up.  other ones are not shy when they are sunning and will accept my approach on foot. some that won't let me walk up to them will let me come up close if I'm in the water.  They are born with there personalities and stay that way unless they learn to be otherwise.
  I'm sure that you could breed a very tame strain of RES in 2 or 3 generations that would breed fairly true for boldness that would be more fun to be around. I have thought about doing that but my turtles need to be shy since herons and water snakes and frogs etc will eat them if they are to bold. But then again I will probably have an over population of them in a few years if things keep going as good for them as they have been. I have lots of baby turtles now and more hatching all the time. I think I have incubated my last batch of eggs and will let them reproduce on there own now.  I hatched 5 nests of eggs this year and still have about 30 left to release next spring. I hope to have the big island pond built the next dry weekend from now and should have a nice new predator free pond to release them into.  I didn't get around to building the island pond this spring as I planed. I was just to busy making seeds.

   Thanks Water_Sprite  here's a few more.

   First is Mankala Ubol, you are right Tink it does have a nice color, definitely a keeper.

   Director Moore

    Supposed to be MR. Martin Randig. And I think it is.

    And turtles sunning,  A couple of males.



   

[Jerry]

great info  thanks

[Esther]

LOL. Love the turtles. Once I found a tiny painted in the road. We picked itup and brought it home and put it in the pond. His (?) name was Timmy and he quickly learned to swim into my hand when I was putting food out. But I made a mistake about 6 weeks later and showed the neighbor's grandkids who were staying for a while. Sure enough, the next day he came up missing and I couldn't help think they might have been playing with him and didn't put him back. But I do know they don't always stay where they are put.

Love your pictures too. You have some beauties.

[PondmaninAL]

Mike, about half of mine are shy. One of the adults will swim around my hand while I'm working on the pump. We have a baby that tries to bite when my wife cleans it's tank. By-the-way Esther, her name is Timmie.

[emm]

I love your waterlilies Mike.  The colours are spectacular!

emm

[miguynmkoi]

The lilies look so perfect!  And they're still blooming?!?  My lilies are definitely embarrassed.

[turtlemike]

  Thanks everybody,   The hardies have stopped blooming but a few tropicals are still blooming.  Rhonda Kay especially

   Esther I keep hoping some painted turtles will show up here like my sliders did.  There are thousands of them down on the river but they haven't made it up on the mountain yet.  I might have to import a few lucky ones from the river and they can stay if they like it here, and I'm sure they would. Like you said they won't necessarily stay but if they like it a lot they will come back.  My big RES that showed up on her own used to go to a neighbors pond about a mile away for a few weeks at a time during summer and then would return home. Now she seems to stay home and doesn't wander as much from pond to pond as she used to.  I think it's because there are more males around now, And more turtles of both sexes.

[Julles]

I love the way your lilies always look like they're lit up from an inward glow.  #3 is my favorite.

[landey1230]

The first pic looks like a cartoon.  So unreal.  Great pics

[turtlemike]

  Thanks again everybody.

  Julles  that is a rare pic because the flowers are still open at sunset and that is the setting sun shining on them at a low angle.  When all other flowers will not open because of the cold, Sunfire still opens wide and looks like a summer flower.

[maryvonne]

Lovely photos Mike.

Maryvonne

[turtlemike]

  Thanks Maryvonne.

  I know you all are probably sick of pics of Sunfire but just one more because I don't think I have ever shown the size of the flower.  Commonly 9 inches in dia.