Baby it's cold outside...

I am bummed today, as I sit shivering in my apartment—I moved my long-time companion ficus tree inside to the kitchen after freezing temps hit over the weekend. It's not looking too good, 90 percent of the leaves have frost damage and it has a strange odor of pumpkin to it. Also frozen over the weekend were basil plants and tomatoes, but I am less attached to those as they seem to bounce back from all my brown thumb attempts at gardening. Ficus, however, was one of my first purchases when I moved to Los Angeles 10 years ago. As I moved from apartment to apartment, it came with me and lent an ecological air to my many, many residences. No doubt it also cleaned many an airborne chemical out of the air too. And my silly whining about my silly tree is nothing close to what local growers are dealing with— many are reporting almost total loss of crop, and they are predicting the damages and loss to reach almost a billion (that's billion with a B) dollars. Global warming for everyone!