How you Texans doing?
 

I have heard things are pretty bad down there, someone mentioned that anyone with tropical plants or pets has likely lost some or all of them...hope you can get through this guys.

Many of the cactus and succulent growers around Austin lost entire collections when greenhouses froze. Fortunately not all lost electricity. The friends I have in Texas all survived.

I was wondering about Red Leaf Exotics...nepenthes nursery

That is just terrible. I begin to think that maybe Ohio isn't so bad.

last i heard 13 million were without power still and water pipes had all frozen leaviing people to resort to burning their furniture and melting snow for water.
But I am suspectng we won't hear from them till they get electricity back to access the internet properly.

Hadn't considered plants but that will be the least of people's worries at the moment.
There was a rescue center in Texas that has housed 4500 turtles to stop them freezing to death but then they ran out of power too.
For the most powerful country to be in this situation is an embarrassment if you ask me.
Hope this gets resolved, we all know who to blame, lets hope the next in charge will not make the same mistakes as his predecessor.

Orchdtinkerer. Keep you politics to yourself and away from here. Good way to set some folks off. The loss of power was due to strategic blackouts by the power controlling company. Not political influence. I only lost power for 6 hrs, thankfully. Out city has been out of water for several days. Things are slowly returning to normal. Yes I am very close to Texas.

Steve (Isurus) is in Texas in the Austin area, and posted a video 5 days ago on Youtube. He has filled his mudroom and other parts of his house with all his orchids which normally live out in the greenhouse. And a nice roaring fire in the fireplace. Hope he's still doing ok since that video!

Says the guy who claimed Bill Gates is trying to microchip us and control global population through the vaccine on a previous post this week.

---------- Post added at 06:25 AM ---------- Previous post was at 06:24 AM ----------

He has definitely been on my mind this week, hope he and his beautiful plants are making it through. How stressful that must be

thx clawhammer,
I like speaking my mind.

I know half of America is divided at the moment so I know mentioning politics will annoy half of America and the other half will agree.

Should I not voice my opinion because I know it won't please everyone?

That seems to be the trend. People have been losing their jobs because they are voicing their opinions too much lately with social media which I think goes against freedom of speech. I mean the best example is Gina Cararo who got axed from my recent favourite tv show "the mandalorian" because she compared the hatred Americans are displaying in this division to hatred showed during the second world war and her comments were completely misunderstood to be making fun of the situation of the second world war.

I accept that people on social media generally have a mob mentality to differing opinions but what will the world turn into?

I am very cautious of what I say these days because it can

a) be interpreted completely wrong
b) annoy people
c) not really achieve anything

But the outcome is that facebook bans all news, people resort to using the dark web instead and the world doesn't really improve at all, everyone will just keep their opinions more to themselves.

If that is the way to make the world a better place then I might as well just keep quiet about all the injustice in the world and hope it gets better by saying nothing.

I know I won't change people's opinion on why this has happened so I won't even try to explain why building a wall instead was not the best move but I will still stick by my opinion. People can believe what they want.

I have a right to my opinion. Have I annoyed some people? Maybe but I am more annoyed that freedom of speech gets criticized so I will stick by what I believe just like others are entitled to think otherwise.

ps: what the news has to say about it:

Texas Power Outages Highlight America’s Frail Infrastructure

Orchidtinkerer, this is an orchid forum. You are welcome to voice your opinion about orchids and plants and related things, but historically OB had tried to keep potentially touchy subjects like politics and religion out of the forums. This is not about stifling free speech, but simply trying to keep the forums friendly and enjoyable for everyone. I think most of know from first hand experience, whether with friends, family, neighbors, or on social media, that discussions about politics often lead to people being upset and feelings get hurt. Rarely does anything positive come out of it.