Random rocking chair thoughts
When I first started blogging, I used to post a few pics of my garden on Sunday and a poem. There aren't many poems that I like so I ran out of poems after a year or so. I still kept posting garden pics and then got too technical because I started using it as a way to organize and categorize gardening instead of just posting pics for their beauty.
I was sitting in my rocking chair on the verandah last night thinking about this. It was cold - in fact near freezing, 36F (that's 2C for my South African and European friends) - but there was no wind so it felt like 36F. Sometimes it can be 50F out there but, with the "wind-chill factor" of a 30 mph icy-cold northwest wind blowing out of the Gulf of Alaska, it feels like it's way below freezing.
Anyway - a wind off the ocean started up and I got chilled. This focussed my mind somewhat and I began to think about what flower pics to post. It's winter and all my flowers except my Christmas cacti are dead. The cacti are blooming like mad but I already posted pics of those. I didn't have a file full of carefully categorized and organized flower pics so I wondered if I should just write something pretty.
Nope - the fact is that I can sit in my rocking chair and think beautiful wonderful thoughts but, when it comes to actually writing them down, I chicken out and opt for pretty pics. If I knew how to embed music files here, I would. Music and flowers convey beauty to me much bettter than words. And I like to communicate beauty. It's a lot more fun to shed light than to cast darkness.
Anyway, here are some random flower pics. It's so cold right now that I'm dreaming of lush tropical islands, juicy tropical fruit and tropical flowers just bursting with warmth and joy.
A canna pic that I forgot to post when I wrote about cannas last summer. My cannas didn't bloom this year - so much for global warming.
A prickly-pear flower. If you've never eaten prickly-pear, you haven't lived. Of course the first time that I picked them I didn't use old newspapers to protect my hands and ended up with swollen fingers from the nasty hairs in the "pears." Next time my Mom armed me with an old Sunday paper and a used potato sack.
Anyone and everyone can grow marigolds. Because they have even more pyrethrins than chrysanthemums, insects won't touch them and they have no other pests or problems. They remind me a lot of my old home-town, Durban, because Durban's population of 2 million is three-quarters East Indian and the Indians use marigolds as decoration and as garnish for food. They are ubiquitous.
I can remember like it was yesterday when I bought my first ixora. I was about 14 or so and had never been to a plant nursery before. I had a some money to burn and bought an ixora. I've never tried to grow ixora since I left Durban. Some people succeed in growing them as small plants in pots indoors but it seems silly to fuss over little plants when you know they can grow into large shrubs in their natural tropical habitats.
Tibouchina or Princess Flower. These grow into small trees in Durban. They're from Brazil and I did not even try to grow them in California so I was surprised to find that our neighbors here in Oregon had a sizable shrub growing in their garden. They gave me a cutting which grew nearly a foot tall and survived one winter but was killed off by a late spring snow last April.
My Mom had a tibouchina bush growing in her back yard that was nearly 15 feet tall. The thing about tibouchina is that they bloom from spring through fall non-stop. I'm going to have another go at growing one here. My mistake was not to protect it from the "wind-chill factor." Next time I'll plant it on an east facing wall (like my neighbors bush) away from the prevailing cold westerly winds.
I was sitting in my rocking chair on the verandah last night thinking about this. It was cold - in fact near freezing, 36F (that's 2C for my South African and European friends) - but there was no wind so it felt like 36F. Sometimes it can be 50F out there but, with the "wind-chill factor" of a 30 mph icy-cold northwest wind blowing out of the Gulf of Alaska, it feels like it's way below freezing.
Anyway - a wind off the ocean started up and I got chilled. This focussed my mind somewhat and I began to think about what flower pics to post. It's winter and all my flowers except my Christmas cacti are dead. The cacti are blooming like mad but I already posted pics of those. I didn't have a file full of carefully categorized and organized flower pics so I wondered if I should just write something pretty.
Nope - the fact is that I can sit in my rocking chair and think beautiful wonderful thoughts but, when it comes to actually writing them down, I chicken out and opt for pretty pics. If I knew how to embed music files here, I would. Music and flowers convey beauty to me much bettter than words. And I like to communicate beauty. It's a lot more fun to shed light than to cast darkness.
Anyway, here are some random flower pics. It's so cold right now that I'm dreaming of lush tropical islands, juicy tropical fruit and tropical flowers just bursting with warmth and joy.
A canna pic that I forgot to post when I wrote about cannas last summer. My cannas didn't bloom this year - so much for global warming.
A prickly-pear flower. If you've never eaten prickly-pear, you haven't lived. Of course the first time that I picked them I didn't use old newspapers to protect my hands and ended up with swollen fingers from the nasty hairs in the "pears." Next time my Mom armed me with an old Sunday paper and a used potato sack.
Anyone and everyone can grow marigolds. Because they have even more pyrethrins than chrysanthemums, insects won't touch them and they have no other pests or problems. They remind me a lot of my old home-town, Durban, because Durban's population of 2 million is three-quarters East Indian and the Indians use marigolds as decoration and as garnish for food. They are ubiquitous.
I can remember like it was yesterday when I bought my first ixora. I was about 14 or so and had never been to a plant nursery before. I had a some money to burn and bought an ixora. I've never tried to grow ixora since I left Durban. Some people succeed in growing them as small plants in pots indoors but it seems silly to fuss over little plants when you know they can grow into large shrubs in their natural tropical habitats.
Tibouchina or Princess Flower. These grow into small trees in Durban. They're from Brazil and I did not even try to grow them in California so I was surprised to find that our neighbors here in Oregon had a sizable shrub growing in their garden. They gave me a cutting which grew nearly a foot tall and survived one winter but was killed off by a late spring snow last April.
My Mom had a tibouchina bush growing in her back yard that was nearly 15 feet tall. The thing about tibouchina is that they bloom from spring through fall non-stop. I'm going to have another go at growing one here. My mistake was not to protect it from the "wind-chill factor." Next time I'll plant it on an east facing wall (like my neighbors bush) away from the prevailing cold westerly winds.
posted by Joubert at 12:02 AM
The Alliance
<< Home