For my northern friends, let me explain Florida winter. It does not adhere to a traditional calendar but shows up sporadically between late November and March. It comes in spurts of about two to ten days. While I enjoy any weather that allows us to turn off the air conditioner, there have been days when we go straight from AC to heat. It’s crazy down here.

Here’s the part that tests us – we must stay alert to the weather forecast for our outdoor plants’ sake because they aren’t used to freezing temperatures or frost. We actually bring some of our outdoor plants into the house to keep them warm. We also are known to cover plants with sheets or blankets to keep them from freezing or incurring frost damage.

My Florida backyard enduring winter, complete with pink flamingo statuary, frozen birdbath, and covered Camellias to protect the buds.

This could be avoided by planting native specimens particular to our plant hardiness zones, but those pretty tropicals are too tempting. Orlando is in Zone 9. One zone to the south of us and we’d be safe (for the most part), but we roll the dice and see what happens. Nurseries thrive on this.

We haven’t had a freeze here in a few years, so Thursday night was a literal shock to the system of our foliage. I made sure that all the sensitive plants were well-watered ahead of time. That helps keep the roots from freezing and can alleviate some damage to the plant, even if the leaves take a hit.

This brings me to what made me contemplate the way we prepare for winter down here. I already brought my orchids in because they don’t like it below 50-60 degrees at night (depending on the variety of orchid). I barely pay any attention to these guys when they aren’t blooming, and I do confess to leaving them outside when it’s too cold.

When they send out a shoot, I bring them in and enjoy them from bud to bloom. The blooms last for weeks, so it’s a good bang for your buck. After the last flower drops, I cut them down to the lowest knuckle and set them outside in an area that gets some, but not too much, sun. And then I forget about them.

After a good rain, I’ll remember them and pour off excess water, so they don’t keep wet feet, and then they are on their own. Periodically I check to see if they are sending out a shoot. I’ve had my current three orchids for several years, but one has been a problem child. The closest thing to corporal punishment for an orchid is repotting it. It doesn’t feel good at the time, but it should yield new growth.

Well, the one I bravely replanted last year looked pretty sad. It was bursting out of its pot and its roots were everywhere. The wood chips that support it had been washed away by our Florida rainstorms, and it couldn’t even stand up. It was pitiful. I was about to say a few kind words over it and throw it in the trash when I noticed. Two shoots had sprung from the root. How had I missed them? Even more than that, how had that plant lived after its horrible repotting, near drowning, and scorching with its roots exposed to the Florida sun for so many months?

I went to the laundry room to check the other two which I brought in a few days prior. They had new shoots, too! I know! I must have been very distracted when I brought them into the house, because surely, they were there at that time. I guess I wasn’t paying attention. I wasn’t looking for growth.

All of that to say, it made me think. How many times have I given up on something too soon? Or worse yet, given up on someone? How often have I put in effort that was short of the desired result and simply given up? Am I paying attention to my surroundings and the things that God calls me to do or to care for? Do I have eyes that see?

It also made me think about Jesus’ parable of the barren fig tree from Luke 13. I am fairly sure this isn’t the exact application of the parable, but it’s how it struck me. The fig tree hadn’t produced in three years, and the owner was ready to cut it down. The gardener asked for one more season to give that tree some love and attention – one more season for it to bear fruit. Jesus, ready to curse that tree, granted the gardener’s request. That alone is amazing.

As I pondered the gardener’s request, I wondered if he had realized that he could have done more for that fruitless fig tree. Maybe that motivated him to try one more time. Maybe that woke him up. I don’t know, and I also don’t know if his efforts for that next season bore fruit, but I assume he tried and did all he could.

This is as close to a stop-and-smell-the-roses story as I can give you today. Yes, I do smell the roses when I walk by, but they are showy and fragrant. My pitiful orchid was neither of those, yet it beckoned me to stop. I almost missed it. I’ll have to watch more carefully for those things in life that I’m not supposed to miss. I’m sure they are all around me. How about you? Life gets busy. Maybe we need to remind ourselves to slow down a bit.

Here’s my replanted orchid. I think I did a better job this time.

My orchid’s happy place is our bathroom, which gets the morning sun.

As I write, we just had a double dose of Florida winter with one temperate day in between. Now the big challenge is to get it warm enough in the house that our feet aren’t cold and that we don’t start sweating and have to step outside. Forced heat is not comfortable, but neither is being forced to be cold. Yep, that was my morning. Florida winter problems. It sure beats being up North.