The Christmas Cactus (Schlumbergera) I bought as a prize for a family game was so beautiful I wanted to keep it for myself. I will keep my eyes open when I go out this weekend for a similar plant. I have had several over the years, but I only have a small Thanksgiving cactus now. I want to find a new Christmas variety and grow it into a large specimen.
I’ve experienced rebloom on my Christmas cactuses, but never to the extent of the number of flowers they have when you purchase them brand new from their greenhouse start. This one may prove my experience with them wrong. I hope the winner of this plant enjoys the beautiful pink flowers.
I am taking part in XingfuMama’s Whatsoever is Lovely Challenge this week. I was able to raise six Monarch Caterpillars from the egg stage on a Milkweed leaf to full-size caterpillars. They are developing in their chrysalis now. I genuinely find their chrysalis stage beautiful. The amazing and luminescent green is adorned with gold that looks like metal.
In years past, during the hotter months of summer, I saw Monarch Butterflies almost daily. However, all butterflies and many insects seem scarce this year, which is worrisome. I’m hoping they rebound and are back in large numbers next year.
I’m starting Six on Saturday, with a view from my bike on the Glassboro-Williamstown Bike Trail.
The trail has several swampy areas. They are lovely and fairylike, with their carpet of duckweed. This photograph is my entry in the Cosmic Challenge—Waterways. Wild Roses border the swamp and trail.
Cinnamon Ferns grow lushly in the woods, and some are beginning to send up their center spike.
Wild asters are delicate in appearance but durable wildflowers.
Beautiful Mountain Laurel in full bloom.
The best photo of the day and the best scent was the honeysuckle. A bumbling bee was drinking the nectar as we passed by.
The beautiful honeysuckle and the bumblebee are my choices for Xingfu Mama’s Whatsoever is Lovely Challenge. I just noticed while looking closer that I also photographed two small ants on the honeysuckle leaves, unbeknownst to me at the time.
The yard is dreary beneath rainy March skies, but the gardens are ablaze with the captured sunshine of daffodils.
I couldn’t leave so many of them to droop beneath the raindrops, so I cut them to create a bouquet to enjoy in the house. A break in the clouds enabled sunshine to pour through the window, backlighting the daffodils perfectly for their portrait.
“Daffodils with sunlit petals all ablaze, Will ever create in me words of praise.”
Forgive me, my amateur poetical nod to William Wordsworth’s beautiful poem about daffodils. You can find his excellent poem below.
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
By WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (1770 – 1850)
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
**************************************
Daffodils are a part of Cee’s Flower of the Day Challenge.
Definitely the daffodils are my “Whatsoever is Lovely” moment for Xingfu Mama’s Challenge.
The daffodils are definitely the dancers of Springtime. They move to the rain, the wind, and face the sunshine, dwelling in the music of nature.
The beautiful moss spores are my choice for The Cosmic Photo Challenge/What’s Flowering Where You Are? Before the recent snowstorm, I grabbed my camera and took a woodland walk. I was amazed at the vivid green of the mosses and lichens. In places where the sun shone through the branches, I noticed some of the mosses had already sent up spore capsules. I’m going to stretch and say these are a type of bloom.
If I had to rate these moss spores for beauty between 1-10, they would receive a 10+ from me.
Skunk cabbage has also emerged in the dead of winter. Here are some of the ‘knobs’ before the snow covered them. I read an amazing fact on the PFEIFFER NATURE CENTER site: some skunk cabbage plants can be over 100 years old. Wow, I will feel a bit more awe over them when I take my next woods walk.
Next time when I become a bit winter-worn and weary over the cold weather, I’ll remind myself of those skunk cabbages never giving up.
As always, lichen on fallen branches are a welcome touch of green.
Whatsoever is Lovely? Definitely the small and delicate bits of green I found in the woods. I wish I could have a large garden plot filled with mosses and lichens in the winter.
The Farmer’s Almanac counts down how many days of winter are left. As of today, there are 63 days left until Spring. Whoo-hoo! I have some sprigs of daffodils showing above ground, and this week, when storms knocked over pots planted with tulip bulbs, I saw that beneath the soil, the bulbs had rooted and were beginning to send up shoots. I hope being overturned won’t stunt the growth.
I have no flowers or interesting dried-out sprigs left to display in a vase for Rambling in the Garden – IAVOM. Happily, I do have a few evergreen plants growing in the gardens. I have gathered sprigs of Nandina, English Ivy, Barberry, and Vinca vine inside today’s vase. I also added a dried-out tassels of a Bald Cypress. To add some interest, I plucked Wisteria pods off the bush and added those into the mix.
The bouquet is so-so, but the vase is a treasure I found this week. Searching for unique containers to craft into hanging planters, I stopped at the local Goodwill. Usually, I find junk, and a caution for other treasure hunters; I often have seen Dollar Store items in the Goodwill store marked at $1.99. To be blunt, this always annoys me. I am often tempted to point it out to the manager, but the earnings from Goodwill Industries go to non-profit groups. Many of the stores have very high rents to pay in the shopping centers they are located in. For this reason, I don’t say a word.
Back to the find in the Goodwill, though. I found treasure—two beautiful McCoy Swan Vases. One is pink, and the other is blue. I used the blue vase for today’s arrangement. I do not have an eye for antiques as some do, but I love McCoy pottery, and I am good at spotting that variety.
My beautiful McCoy vase twins are, Whatsoever is Lovely to me—a perfect choice for Xingfu Mama’s Week Two Challenge.
My IAVOM (In A Vase on Monday) floral arrangement has a definite Christmas theme. Although no flowers are left blooming in my backyard, I have many evergreen trees and bushes to use in vases. The vase in this arrangement is a heavy-bottomed crystal bowl. The weight helps keep the long piece of floral foam/oasis steady. I used an entire piece for this project and trimmed the top corners. to a Christmas tree shape.
The bottom layers are inserted into the oasis with a downward curve, the following few middle layers are inserted straight out, and the top layers of greens are inserted pointed upwards. I added a few purchased roses and some baby’s breath. A friend created the tree with me, and it’s interesting how different our trees were when finished.
One caution if you create a similar tree, place the container in the sink for a few hours. Gravity caused the water in the oasis to drain downward. The result was overflow. I also put a plate under the arrangement; a bowl would have worked too.
Here is the same arrangement in color. Both of my sons wore the shoes around the bottom. The little pink slippers were mine as a baby. They look sweet around the Christmas tree; having them out allows me to cherish the memories again.
The baby shoe display is part of Xingfu Mama’s ‘Whatsoever is Lovely’ challenge. I applaud all who take the time to offer challenges for WordPress bloggers, and a big end-of-the-year thank you to the readers who leave such gracious feedback in my comment section. It is appreciated.
XingfuMama offers a Photo Challenge for September: “The challenge is simple: take one photo and get creative with it by processing it three different ways.”
I am using Lunapic.com. This is one of my favorite photo editing sites. When you want to save your photo after tweaking/filtering in LunaPic, go to file, click and a save box will drop down. Choose the format you want to save your photo in. The photograph is automatically saved in your download file. The file ending up in the download file tripped me up for awhile, but I finally figured it all out. It is so much fun to tweak your photos in LunaPic. You can also add text. You can save file, then you can go on tweaking without uploading the original again if that is how you are inclined to work. Have fun. Thanks to XingfuMama for the challenge.
The first filter I used was the ‘Homer’ Art Filter – One of the Famous Artists Filters.
The second filter I used was in the filter column and was called Thermal Iridescence. It is rather bright, but I love the way the filter accentuates the negative space in the photo, especially in the foliage of the tree. This is a good filter to use to help compose a painting or other artwork using the lighthouse photo as a reference.
The third filter is the Warhol Effect. I think all three tweaks of the photograph turned out well. Give Lunapic a try when you have some time to play around with photo editing.
The beautiful skies depicted in these photographs are part of Skywatch.
I was pulling the trash cans to the curb when my neighbor across the street called out to me, “Look up.” I did, immediately ditched the trash can, and ran for my camera. I was lucky and the bronze and brown hawk wasn’t disrupted by my motion beneath him. He sat prettily for his portrait against the overcast sky. He’s a beauty, and I believe he is the same hawk I’ve written of in past posts.
For some reason he brought to mind pole-sitters. I’m assuming that in the generations born after me, most people have no idea what constitutes a pole-sitter. Pole-sitting didn’t take a lot of skill, just a bit of bravado and endurance.
Wikipedia says: “Pole sitting is the practice of sitting on top of a pole (such as a flagpole) for extended lengths of time, generally used as a test of endurance. A small platform is typically placed at the top of the pole for the sitter. Led by the stunt actor and former sailor Alvin “Shipwreck” Kelly, flagpole sitting was a fad in the mid-to-late 1920s, but mostly died out after the start of the Great Depression.”
If you have never heard of pole-sitting, take a look at this quick Youtube video:
