Cocoa Beach Saturday in January

This is the south Cocoa Beach crowd this Saturday Jan. 29, 2011

except for these guys just beyond the shore.

Waterline

Eat your veggies

Good morning, Northeast

Feels really good in January to watch the Weather Channel briefly for calibration purposes and then step outside to this. Forecast high for Cocoa Beach today, Jan. 19, is 74 degrees and 76 tomorrow.

January blooming continues

Following the corn plant's recent unexpected bloom inside the house, the flapjack cacti in the backyard began pushing out their annual flower spikes. Not as fragrant or as rare as the corn plant but no less impressive.

Dracaena fragrans

After peacefully coexisting in my home for the last 15 years this corn plant suddenly sprouted a bloom recently, it's first. After noticing a strong, sweet perfume-like aroma in the house one evening I realized it was coming from the bloom. Google informed me that the Latin name of the plant is Draceana fragrans. The fragrans part is easy to figure out. For about a week, every evening just about sundown the plant released a heady scent of perfume that filled the house. The bloom is gone now. I hope it doesn't take another 15 years to enjoy the next one.

Calm days

We've had some beautiful calm days in 2011 so far. This is looking north across the Banana River towards Port Canaveral from the 520 Causeway. We now have our third red light camera at the corner of A1A and Shepard. Careful.