Red Trio

Yesterday morning, I was thrilled to spot not one, not two but three red hibiscus blossoms! On my bush at least, it’s not only unusual to have three blooms at a time but unheard of to have three blooms indoors—and on a cloudy day! The red beauties brightened the cloudy morning and gave me a smile.


What wondrous autumn colors we have in the countryside! We also had wonderful weather over the weekend to explore some new-to-us areas. I wanted to inhale the beauty into my soul so that I would have it over though winter’s colorless days. I love taking photos of God’s glorious creation but pictures don’t quite have the impact of walking in sunshine, feeling a cool breeze blowing across your face, looking out at a mountain vista, marveling at the reds, oranges and golden yellows of the backlit autumn leaves, crunching fallen leaves underfoot.

Autumn has also fallen indoors as I’m still picking up various plants’ leaves as they adjust to their new drier environment. It’s nothing to be concerned about though, since they’re still pushing forth new leaves.

The pear tree outside our window is finally turning red, orange and yellow. Our area foliage is at its peak of color. There’s a particular stately ginkgo tree in town that’s one of the last trees to turn. We saw it Friday in its full golden glory; what a crescendo!

Saving Seeds

The hyacinth bean vine and the four o’clocks have produced mature seeds for the harvesting. They can be planted next year for a new crop; until then, they, and the remaining ones can be saved for several years in a cool, dry place. Glassine envelopes are often recommended but I’ve noticed that many seed companies are packaging their seeds in resealable foil packs so I’m saving foil-lined tea bag packages. I once met the guy who invented foil-lined packaging—thanks Mr. B!

Saving seeds of old varieties has become an important endeavor as hybrids are quickly replacing them. Hybrids can only be grown from patented seeds that you buy from the grower. While hybrids will often produce seeds in your home garden and even grow, the plant will revert to one of its parents rather than the beautiful hybrid that you bought. Sometimes that’s good but it’s not usually what you’re looking for. When we lived in New England, we learned what a problem this is for farmers. They can no longer save seed from their harvest to plant for next year’s crop—they have to spend a lot of money to buy more seed.

I enjoy hybrid flowers but many hybrid flowers and vegetables are “designed” for a particular market such as tough-skinned tomatoes that can withstand long-distance trucking and a long shelf-life in stores, but are fairly tasteless—that’s why home-grown tomatoes taste so much better. While roses aren’t generally grown from seed, they’re an illustration of contrast between the old varieties and those grown “for the market”. The voluptuous old-fashioned “cabbage roses” with their full-blown petals and heady fragrance are unmatched in their style of beauty but they could never stand up to the rigors of the floral industry. The closely-wrapped petals and long, sturdy stems of the American Beauty–type rose are better suited to last for their trip from the greenhouse to the wholesaler to the florist to your home but lack much fragrance (you can make them last longer still by changing their water every day and recutting the stems at an angle). It’s a trade-off but our planet would suffer loss if the only plants cultivated were those of market convenience.

Besides, it’s fun to share seed with other gardeners. My friend R. gave me hyacinth bean vine seeds from her garden.

Sky Symphony

Pouring rain doesn’t deter the chickadees, cardinals and blue jays from chirruping and rushing from tree to tree. Another crowd of pilots are in no hurry at all but are taking a bug break on the lawn.

Now that the rain has stopped, sky water gurgles through the gutters sounding like a mountain brook.

Though the temperatures aren’t expected to climb out of the fifties today, the air is fresh…washed.

The pineapple sage blossom has developed a beautiful arch as it opened; another is beginning.

Garden to Art

Gardens and my art have nearly always intertwined. I grew up around my grandmothers’ gardens and at home, in a creative atmosphere. When I realized (later than most) that it was time to go back to college I began working in flower shops to help finance my education. Since art school was my goal and I wanted to draw flowers, it made sense to get to know flowers even more personally.

During my college years (there were many) I had the opportunity to plant a garden amidst the mature landscape of the older house where we lived. I yanked English Ivy out of the neglected soil until I fell over backwards. More than once, I came face to face with angry bees that left me with a souvenir of the encounter. But I grew the garden pictured here.

Okay, so all these flowers didn’t bloom at once--though most could have, but that’s the beauty of art. Though my painting teacher frowned on such romance, when I graduated from her excellent training I consolidated my reference photos to paint The Artist’s Garden.

Hmm…a small garden spider just hopped onto my mouse pad—definitely harmless to me…

Morning Sun

I love seeing the morning sun shine in; I even made a sitting area by the windows so I could drink it in and naturally, the plants came to join me there.

I’m hunting through thrift shops for small ceramic pots for my really small indoor plants since the terra cotta ones dry out much too quickly when they’re that small. If I don’t find any, I’ll go back to the blue and yellow box store—or maybe the orange one. I need good quality, color (the “right” colors of course) and a low price.

The afternoon temperature is forecast to be 70 degrees—I need to arrange my time and activities to sit in the garden to soak up the warm sun there while I still can. The stores and radio stations are already leading up to Christmas, “its right around the corner.”

Sun Effects

My arrangement of water globes definitely catches the sunlight—even if I did have to get on my hands and knees to photograph it (I learned to do this from a professional photographer). One of my favorite aspects of colored or stained glass is the way the sun lights it; it can be beautiful on its own but there’s nothing like the combination of light and color!

The arrangement of sunlight has definitely changed with clocks turned back to Standard Time; I think the plants in the morning windows will benefit most since we open the curtains early. Even outdoors, the east-facing pots have held up to the cold weather better since the rising sun dispels some of the chill.

However, over the weekend the combination of sun, furnace and our busy comings and goings left some of the recently migrated indoor plants in need of dried leaf removal. Oops! I checked and watered them before I went out but they apparently dried out before I knew it. Remember, they’re still in terra cotta pots. But thankfully, they’re not too much worse for the wear.

Leaves that droop or wither can often be revived as with the spider plantlet “Lazarus” but if they’re yellow or brown--they’re gone. Go ahead and cut them off since the plant will put its energy into trying to revive the leaves instead of making new ones—it simply can’t bring that kind back. (While this can be a parable for some parts of life, it does not apply to marriage or necessarily physical health because God is able to revive that which was dead!)

Safe Harbor

It began raining last night; I’m sure the water pipe repairmen digging a huge hole in the ground so deep that they had to look up to see out, were glad that they had filled it in before the rain started! Will “inclement” weather prevent them from digging and replacing the next part and leaving us once again without running water? A recorded message at the office hinted so. But I’ll still be prepared.

A fresh breeze blows through the dampness giving the air a comforting feel that reminds me of harboring at my grandmother’s house as a child too sick to go to school. It may have only been one cool rainy morning but the memory stuck as a good one.

However, I prefer to be indoors in such weather; the larger heliotrope plant seems to be happier indoors too. The bougainvillea however, is going through its annual leaf drop. It does well enough indoors, even blooms a little but invariably drops its leaves when its environment changes, then grows new ones. It seems that I’m forever picking up leaves but at least it doesn’t have to have a litter box or be walked.

The Last Flowers of Summer?

Perhaps this is the last arrangement of my garden “flowers” for the season. The Victoria Blue Salvia is more intensely blue violet with the cold weather and the Parrot Leaf is as bright as ever, not seeming to mind the cold one bit (yet). When I uncovered them this morning I was struck by the intensity of their colors and knew that a cobalt blue “vase” would magnify that intensity. Why not bring some in before they were gone since both “flowers” were plentiful? (When I was younger, it seemed that all the “older” women referred to everything in a garden that wasn’t vegetable or tree as “flowers”).

I spent several years in the floral industry but I still like my grandmother’s flower arranging style, “They need to look natural like they do when they’re growing.” She was ahead of her time. ☺

In the garden I saw two bright red male cardinals vying for territory and, probably, a mate. I can’t remember when I last saw cardinals around here.

Two Kinds of Singers

Has something changed? What has drawn a variety of birds wheeling and swooping around our back easement? The vibrant blue of a male blue jay has been scarce until today. The birds seemed intent but not distressed. I don’t know what’s different except that the calendar has changed to November but birds don’t generally read calendars. Is it the cool, fresh air? We’ve been buoyed by that for awhile. Maybe the local cats are involved. I don’t think anyone is feeding the birds’ expensive tastes. When I’m outdoors, I’m aware that there are so many aspects of God’s creation, so many potential factors of influence that I don’t know anything about.

The red hibiscus seems happy to be back in its winter home, blooming twice today behind the Hawaiian Ti plant. When I brought the beauty queen in, I heard a high “singing.”
“That’s pleasant. We have our own natural soloist.” Then the cricket’s “song” became louder—and shriller.
“That cricket will eat your plants! We’ve got to get it out of here,” my husband insisted.
Oh yeah, there’s that. But where was it? The loud “singing” directed our search to the hibiscus but our eyes couldn’t see what our ears heard.

Then we brought in the large flashlight and there it was—a tiny brown cricket with a “voice” that belied its size. Experience with the huge green grasshoppers taught me how to capture and remove this mini. I moved quickly out through the door and into the garden to grab my garden gloves and an empty plastic pot then rushed back in to scoop the interloper into the pot. Out again I rushed and sent it flying over the rail into the bush below. Ah, relief.

Hardy Sorts—Sort of

My remaining outdoor garden plants have much more space around them now that I’ve brought many indoors for the winter. However, I have a little more room to arrange them; I enjoy decorating.

Where rearranging is less of an option, I’ve grouped some water globes in a vacant pot. I’ll watch to see how the sun shines through them in the afternoon to see if I need to move or spread them.

I love colored glass and got to see the Dale Chihuly exhibit twice when it came to town. The exhibit featured a walkway with a strong Plexiglas ceiling covered with a kaleidoscope of lighted colored glass. Walking through the color wonderland thrilled me! I’m excited to share a link to a picture of a similar installation! http://www.chihuly.com/ceilings-persian-pergola-ceiling-2002_detail.aspx

It was so cold last night that it was only 33 degrees at 9am! Yet these are plants that survived it, covered with a sheet: Tropicana Canna, Sweet Potato Vine, Hyacinth Bean Vine, Parrot Leaf, Daylily, Basil, Pineapple Sage, Peppermint, Victoria Blue Salvia, Mexican Petunia. Remember, watering is vital to plant survival in the cold; dehydration is what kills plants in the cold.

The sickening sound of three beautiful shade trees being chopped down to prevent future problems with the continually problematic community water pipes has begun.