Friday Fleurs: Orchid

Thank goodness for orchids in these gray days of winter. It's always a treat when one starts to bloom and the best part is they will stay in bloom for months. This one is a small grocery store specimen that someone brought me less than a year ago, and this is its second bloom. It's in a tiny little pot and it has several more buds on it as well as these first blooms. I usually keep my orchids in a sunny window upstairs to get the maximum light, and then when they start to bloom I move them around the house.

Unfortunately, this is the only white I'll be seeing today. I am so jealous as I watch the news and see the snow falling farther north. We just missed this East Coast blizzard and are only getting heavy rain today and maybe some flurries tonight.

Amaryllis Envy

As you  know I am pretty proud of my three-year- old amaryllis that is re- blooming right now. I take lots of pictures, close up, so it really does look pretty spectacular in the pictures. I was brought back to reality yesterday when talking to one of my colleagues at work. I was bragging about my amaryllis and she told me that she has  about 12 amaryllis plants, and most of them are blooming right now. One of her plants has three stalks with four or five blooms each! And some of her plants are three feet tall! Wow, talk about getting the wind knocked out of your sails.  She and her husband treat themselves to a new bulb every year from White Flower Farm (hmm, I like that idea) and some of their bulbs are now 10-12 years old. They keep them all in a bay window in their living room. Can you imagine a more spectacular sight on a winter day than 12 amaryllis blooming at the same time? I asked her to bring me a picture and if she does I will surely post.  I find I am coveting my neighbor's amaryllis...

I saw an amazing variety of amaryllis the other day called Green Dragon. I'm going to look for that one next fall. And I think I am going to start that "buy a new bulb a year" tradition.

'Green Dragon' amaryllis

Winter Gardens

"From December to March, there are for many of us three gardens: the garden outdoors, the garden of pots and bowls in the house, and the garden of the mind's eye."

~Katherine S. White, 1892-1977, garden writer, editor at The New Yorker, and wife of E.B. White

My winter garden indoors

My winter garden outdoors

The winter garden in my mind (image via Pinterest)

Meadowlark Walk: February

Yesterday was a cold and cloudy day and before we went to a Super Bowl party (yea Ravens!) we went for a winter walk at Meadowlark. It was snowing lightly (really, it was, even though you don't see any snow) while we tramped through the woods and around the lakes which made for a very pretty walk. We were practically the only people in the park, as we only saw three other people the whole time we were there. I am sure it is because I am taking pictures practically every day, but it's truly amazing to me how much there is to see in the winter. I'm sure some people think there is nothing to look at it in the winter, but the more I walk in the winter the more I appreciate all there is to see-- the structure of trees, the texture of bark,  the view of the sky through the trees, the wilted detritus of a flower bed,  and the occasional surprise of color in an evergreen or a lone early bulb blooming. And the quiet. Here in northern Virginia it's nice to find some quiet sometimes.

Witchhazel blooming

Walt thinks he is 18 again and can swing on a vine

Pretty tree structure

Pink hellebore!

Stinking hellebore

Now that's a tree

Frozen Cardoon

Icy cabbage

Love this copper tipped arborvitae

Happy frog

The Panther

Anti-terrorist agent John Corey and his wife, FBI agent Kate Mayfield,  are at it again, saving the world from terrorists. In this latest book,  The Panther, they are sent  to San’a, Yemen, on a mission to assassinate the mastermind behind the bombing of the USS Cole, an Al Qaeda operative nicknamed The Panther.  But of course John Corey knows better and soon begins to suspect the CIA might have ulterior motives for sending him and Kate into one of the most dangerous places in the Middle East.  In a previous book, Kate had killed a top CIA agent, and well, nobody likes smart-ass Corey, so they aren't particularly popular.  I like DeMille’s books, I think he is a master of the thriller, but I felt like this one was overwritten. He could have tightened up the story and saved about 200 pages. I’ve really liked the cynical and smartass character of John Corey in past books, but in this one his mouth is really over the top and he really got on my nerves.  You just want to say enough already, get on with the story.

As with so many authors who write multiple books with the same characters, the earlier books are better.

Get On With It: Winter in the Garden

I feel like I got my ass kicked this morning, after reading an article in today's Post by garden writer Adrian Higgins.  Instead of lamenting the fact that we've had such a lousy winter, he wrote about how we should count our blessings and use our mild winter to "get stuff done" and start preparing the garden for spring plantings.  I particularly loved his description of his own temperature activity table for winter gardening:

"In the teens, don't get out of bed. Twenties: Fuss with seeds indoors. Thirties: Bundle up and and do what you must in the garden. Forties: Bundle up and go get 'em. Fifties: You're in clover; make a day of it."

Because our ground is not frozen, there is a lot we can do in the garden, including pruning shrubs and trees, weeding, edging, cleaning up and straightening paths, reworking a bed to prepare for new plantings. The more we can do now the easier our spring chores will be. I need to be reminded that every time I pull a weed now that is one less weed to pull in the spring.  And as I sit here looking out the window I can see lots of things I can do, so maybe I better forget about that winter hiatus and get back out in the garden.

Amaryllis Blooms

I am always so amazed when my amaryllis actually wakes up from its dormant state and starts to show signs of life. Mine first started to show some growth the second week of January and the photos below all took place within the space of a week. I shot the first photo on January 24 and the last one was this  morning, January 30. Amaryllis are really fascinating to watch, you can almost see things happening by  the minute. I most love the day when the buds are so plump and just beginning to open. And then, voila, pure spectacular-ness.

Last year my amaryllis fully opened on February 24, a whole month later than this year. I think I was pretty much on the same time frame with bringing it in and putting it in the dark basement, but it took so much longer last year for the bulb to wake up.  This is the third year of bloom for this one amaryllis and I feel pretty good about the $20 I paid for the bulb. I do think it is a little shorter than past years and the blooms are not quite as large. Well instead of admiring my beautiful blooms during the cold days of winter, I am admiring  them today on a 70 degree day. Yes this weather is stifling and it's driving me crazy. I went for a walk yesterday and didn't even need a sweatshirt. I took a walk around my garden and felt like I should be starting to pull some weeds, clear out some leaves.  I'm not ready yet for the garden. I like the winter hiatus. I guess I am going to have to think about moving further north.

Wintry Mix Morning

Is there anything better than snow on evergreens? I don't think so.  I  love the look of drooping limbs, heavy with snow. Well,  that's not the case here, but at least they do have a dusting of snow. We have a little wintry mix this morning, enough to delay school openings 2 hours and make for a pleasant morning sitting here with my tea and a gray and icy drizzle outside my window. I go into work at noon, so I shouldn't have any problem as it will be mostly rain by then.  No worries, though, as it's going to get up to 60 later in the week before it gets cold again over the weekend. This was a nice weekend, beginning on Friday afternoon with a delicious French bistro lunch with Eileen and Prudy at Lyon Hall in Arlington to celebrate Prudy's and my birthdays. On Saturday, Gillian and I drove out to Leesburg and Purcellville to check a few places out, and then on Sunday Walt and I went to the movies in the afternoon to see Zero Dark Thirty. We both liked it a lot, especially after the first 20 minutes with my eyes closed (torture scenes). We both thought it was really well done, and I am totally in awe of our military and the people who can plan and carry off a mission like that one.

Elsewhere

I am a fan of Richard Russo's books, so I happily picked up his little memoir, Elsewhere. I knew it was about his mother, and growing up in upstate New York, and that he and his mother did not have a typical mother/son relationship. Russo grew up with his single mother Jean in Gloversville, NY, which amazingly enough used to be the "dress glove" capital of the United States. Well you can imagine what happened to that town. It comes back to life in the fictional down-and-out towns of Russo's novels, but for the young boy Russo, growing up there in the 1950s, he was "happy as a clam."

Russo escaped the town when he left for college in Arizona, and his mother never thought twice about coming with him--without a job, without a place to live. And so begins the rest of Russo's life, becoming a college professor and eventually a successful writer, and with his mother pretty much always attached to him. He is her primary caretaker for the rest of her life, moving her around the country with him and his family, finding her apartment after apartment because she is never satisfied, always moving 'elsewhere,' always chasing an elusive happiness. It's exhausting just reading about it, and a little frustrating, because he never says no to her,  never says 'that's enough, ' never admits to himself that she might be a little bit crazy. He never seems to resent her and it isn't until after her death (and she lived a long life) that he finally figures out her diagnosis, and then he feels guilty because he didn't know earlier, and didn't find her the help she needed.

While interesting to read I would have liked more details about other parts of his life, in particular his wife, who as one reviewer said, is clearly a saint.

First Snow 2013

I've been complaining so much this winter about our lack of snow, so you know I'm posting pictures of our first snowfall. I woke up about 4 am hearing a snowplow, so I was pretty darn excited!  (Don't laugh, Ohio and NY family.)  Not a lot of snow, but enough to make the garden look pretty.  It's still snowing lightly right now and we may get some more tomorrow. Fingers crossed.