Choice Morsels

 Today's pictures are all winter freeze survivors that thrived despite the temperatures. This clump of fall annuals:  I covered it with a plastic yard trash bag and two layers of towels during the 2 hard freezes this season in North Florida and it's quite happy now. Tall seems is a healthy looking Cosmos, plus lots of Chinese Forget-Me-Nots, Bachelor Button greenery and a Coreopsis plus a couple Easter Lilies that were already there are poking thru. My pot of Cilantro prefers Florida winter. I never even covered it. Time for Mexican cooking! My container of Green Onions Also not covered. Great for snipping fresh all winter long! My container of Valentine Sorrel You can see just a few outer leaves were effected by the freeze. Sorrel is edible perennial; sort of lemony. Can be used like an herb in salads, sauces, soups & casseroles. It's called Valentine because of the pretty red-veining. It's a member of the buckwheat family. 

We belong to a YMCA that's located up in the plaza, about 2 miles away from where we live. There future has been up in the air for over a year now--particularly since they had to close the pool area. Truthfully, the whole Emerald Coast YMCA, which consists of about 5 Y's spread throughout the community, has been operating in the red. They are terrible at managing their money over all. This Y branch near us has not, to date, even paid it's debt for all the remodeling done initially to open it 7 years ago. Today I got the news that it's officially closing on Dec 15. This means my husband and I need to find a new fitness location we can both go to that is also nearby . So, I did a little on-line research for local fitness centers and, guess what, there is a Snap Fitness center about another mile down the road from where the Y is that would cost us  less to belong to monthly then the monthly fee were presently paying for our decrepit & failing YMC...