Visiting the Orchid House at Longwood Gardens is the perfect remedy for the winter weary. #SixonSaturday The large Paphiopedilum Orchids seem to almost float atop their slender stems.
Tag: #SixonSaturday
Place – Meadow Walk/Longwood Gardens
We went to Longwood this week. The walk alongside the Meadow was golden and glorious. Spectacular wildflowers called Common Cup-Flowers lined the path. Goldfinches, butterflies, bumble and honeybees, gathered nectar and seeds.
Common cup-plant is a native wildflower in the Asteraceae (daisy) family. It may self-seed. It typically grows to around 6′, however, can grow to reach 9′ tall. ~North Carolina Extension Gardener.
The Common Cup-plant is my choice for Cee’s Flower of the Day.
The yellow daisy-like flowers were spectacular against the bluest of skies.
The child in me wanted to wade through the tall grasses and flowers and climb this perfect branching tree.
Even a photograph that went askew seemed pretty as it gave me a good glimpse of the underside of the flowers.
If you visit Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, take a trip to Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square.
These photographs are part of Garden Ruminations/Six on Saturday.
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Photo Challenges – Sea Birds
Over the past decade, I’ve dabbled in a variety of WordPress photo challenges, each offering a unique perspective. In this post, I’m excited to share my experiences from three such challenges.
You may notice a red spot on the seagull in the photograph I chose for the birdwatching challenge hosted by Don’t Hold Your Breath. The Audubon Society explains this in a great article. In short, the red spot is a visual clue to help baby chicks peck the parent bird’s bill to be fed.
One of my longtime favorite challenges is Friday Skywatch. Although I am a day late, they accept entries throughout the week. My photos show the wide beach at the point of Strathmere, NJ. We love Strathmere beach and appreciate the fact that it is one of the few southern New Jersey beach towns that don’t require beach tags. (Wildwood, North Wildwood, and Wildwood Crest are also free beaches.)
The last photograph I include is Six on Saturday hosted by Garden Ruminations. My theme is a few of the Sea Birds from the Jersey Shore. These photos were taken during weekend visits to Strathmere and Wildwood, New Jersey.
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Photograph – Six on Saturday/Snow Day
My area of Southern New Jersey went over 700 days without accumulating snowfall. Yesterday, we had a beautiful snowstorm throughout the day. What a lovely sense of peace the quiet flakes instill into the atmosphere. Early in the morning, I couldn’t resist grabbing my camera and taking photos as I fed the birds.
Here are my choices for Six on Saturday.
- A Junco, one of a large flock that visits my yard, seemed to wait patiently for me to scatter birdseed.
- The Rose of Sharon pods were the perfect resting place for snowflakes. Looking closely, you can see a few of the sharp points of individual flakes.
- The gourd birdhouse, crafted several years ago, looked lovely with a coating of snow.
- The Japonica, colorful with new growth, wore a blanket of snowflakes.
- English Ivy, indestructible, seemed impervious to the cold.
- A stem of a zinnia, left in place as cover for birds, held a mound of crystal snowflakes…beautiful.
The flying pig who holds court over the sideyard couldn’t escape the snowfall. A natural monochromatic setting with the grey sky behind him and the bird bath pedestal beneath him seems a good choice for Skywatch Friday.
I love this quote from my Farmer’s Almanac Daily Calendar:
When oak trees bend with snow in January, good crops may be expected.
Farmer’s Almanac
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Phlowers – Six on Saturday/First Blooms
On a day filled with windy March bluster, I found first blooms in the 2023 garden beds. Top left to bottom right: Japonica, Crocus in three colors, hyacinths and a perky daffodil.
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Phlowers – Six on Saturday/Longwood Conservatory Winter
Here’s a sampling of the hanging baskets in the Longwood Gardens Conservatory yesterday. It’s hard to capture the size/scale of the flower baskets. To say they are large is an understatement.
Some of the plants are: Cape-primrose (Streptocarpus), Anthuriums, Cinnamon-Wattle Acacia, Bromeliads.
My favorite walk was along the acacia passage. The Cinnamon-Wattle acacias were in bloom. The fragrance was incredible. There was definitely a feeling of enchantment present as we gazed down the corridor. Periwinkle is one of my favorite colors, and the combination of the streptocarpus with the soft yellow of the acacia was stunning. The streptocarpus are part of Cee’s Flower of the Day.
I also had some moments of inspiration. I don’t know if this is a hanging basket of some type for displaying flowers, a light fixture, or something totally unique to my imagination. I am determined to create better hanging basket arrangements this year for the porch and outdoors and this will be my artistic muse for the project.
As we walked within the walls the soft winter sun outdoors illuminated everything inside with a glow of Royal Silver. I wish I could somehow capture and copy the indescribable atmosphere in a watercolor painting.
Here’s a silly self-portrait of us in the conservatory; a visual description of our joy. It’s a little distorted, the mirror had a funhouse quality, but it still captured our happiness in being in a place filled with flowers and fragrance.
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Photo Challenges – FOTD Salvias/Six on Saturday
Salvias, sometimes referred to as sage, are the champions of my Autumnal garden beds.
In truth, all SAGES are SALVIAS. Over time, though, the term sage has been closely aligned with cooking or medicinal use and the term salvia has been given to the more ornamental members of this genus. Nevertheless, Salvia is the Latin name, or Genus, given to all these plants. ~Mountain Valley Growers
The colors of my salvias have stayed vibrant through several frosty mornings.
Pineapple Sage, Salvia elegans, is my Flower of the Day, part of Cee’s Flower of the Day Challenge
The flowers of Mexican Sage are fuzzy and remind me of purple bumblebees and velvet.
The salvias are so blossom-loaded; I felt the hummingbirds stayed too long this year, sipping their nectar through early October. I hope they have made their journey now to warmer climates.
I held a piece of this salvia up against the bluest of Autumn skies; the camera captured the velvet texture of the blossoms and the detail of the leaves. What I didn’t see when I took the photo was the small flying insect resting beneath one of the buds. This photo is part of Friday Skywatch.
Six on Saturday Collage
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Place – Six on Saturday – Cedar Lake
Twenty-five years ago, on hot summer days, I took my pre-teen sons to a beautiful swimming pond called Washington Lake. The place closed, was vacant for years, but recently was repurposed into a walking park. The day was warm, but there was plenty of ice on the water to remind us it was still February. It was a perfect opportunity to visit a beloved place I hadn’t seen in decades.
The beach, once dotted with lawn chairs and umbrellas, is still wide and inviting. New docks now stand where once my boys jumped from diving boards and slid down slides.
The water is so clear it reminded us of the Caribbean. It is pristine, almost like looking through glass.
We walked all the way around, something you couldn’t do years ago, now the walking trails give you a 360 degree view.
This little knoll seemed a perfect place to picnic.
The white pine in the surrounding woodland is beautiful. I saw a lot of milkweed pods too, a good place for monarch butterflies to thrive. In about six weeks or so the trees might begin to bud. We will try to visit often in the next few months.
This challenge is part of Six on Saturday and Skywatch.
