The restorative power of flowers

It wasn't just the flu, it was strep throat too. Bummer. And a wicked cough with 70% hearing loss. And NO ac to boot with humidity high enough to rain in the house. So I was drooping at the dining room table nearly overwhelmed with morbid self pity when my eye caught a flash of brilliant fushia orchid. No I didn't grow them. They were a gift to myself on June 16 two weeks after my husband had forgotten our anniversary.

There I was, head on the table, feeling low when a little thought came along... how can you feel sorry for yourself when you have a vase of orchids on your table? Look at them! They are amazing! Look outside at your deck, all covered with flowers. You are fortunate indeed.

My pity left right then. I kicked it out and I didn't let it come back. Indeed, how can one focus on anything dismal when there is so much beauty just waiting to take center stage? See here, orchids! Look there, petunias! Everywhere are green trees and grass and roses.

The orchids are now 2 weeks old and they look just as gorgeous today as the day they arrived. My strep throat is almost gone, my hearing is returning and we got the new heat pump fired up today for the first time so we're chillin' nicely. I can't wait to do more gardening again. The orchids and roses showed me Life Is Good.

Resting

The flu pretty much wiped me out. I think I did something with the plants a couple times but don't remember what. I remember getting my hands in dirt but don't recall why. I vaguely recall carrying buckets of water to help wilting plants. I don't know who was wilted more, the plants or me.

One thing is for sure. Every year from now on forever more, my deck shall have boxes of flowers on the railing, tomatoes and roses in barrels, and a bench for resting. Good things are worth repeating.

Gardening, Photographing and Coughing

Gardening is possible when one has a cough. You just need a little help. I had to get the Rose Support Team to help carry all the water. It's been 9 days since I got the flu and now I'm coughing my way out of it. Today, the Rose Support Team and I delivered 18+ gallons of fortified water to the roses around the property. All four bushes along the road out front have been stripped by deer. I never got to see the James Galway bloom, with all it's fat buds too. I never even got to see the buds of Queen of Denmark. That just plain stinks. At least Blush Noisette is hanging in there, with a flush of new buds and a couple blooms so far.

We watered all the potted plants on the deck. I potted the last three green pepper plants that were starting to die in the little plastic tray. And then, just to cheer them up in their new dirt, I gave them a couple cups of rainwater from a bucket on the deck. 15 minutes later, to my horror, I discovered that the bucket of rainwater was actually caustic, soapy scrub water left over from one of the kid's chores. GASP!

By the time I found out, one of the peppers was near passing out and leaning way over. Immediately I dumped tons of fresh water on the pot. And more. And more. And more in hopes of rinsing all the chemicals out of the dirt. It must have worked because by nightfall, the peppers were sticking straight up and looked to be 2" taller. I should have measured them before planting. Now if they can just live through the night...

This evening, we picked and ate our first tomato. That was right fine!

I had to sit and cough a spell so I played around with my photos. Make sure you click on the photo to see a larger version.

Cherry Blossoms. The harshness of this photo is fascinating. It's far different from the soft pink and white color version.



















Fire Rose. The extremely rare kind the slowly grows out of hot lava.
(Sssh, Pat Austin's in disquise.)


























The extremely photogenic Pat Austin poses again.


























Ah yes, Pat Austin stylin', Miami style. I used colors reminiscent of our bright days in Miami, coral pinks and seafoam greens. Alas, my stylin' rose would never pass inspection by Coral Gables' color police. My choice of Sherwin Williams Coming Up Roses and Aquarium colors aren't on their Coral Gable's approved color list. I once heard that only certain colors of flowers could be grown there too. Ghastly if it's true! I'd die of color starvation if I lived there.

























This is Rise n' Shine. I'm crazy over dew. Make sure you click on the photo to see the larger version.




















This last will be printed to frame if I don't paint it first.
Petal Puddles.

Cascadia Rootings

Cutting - part of a plant cut off. Rooting - part of a plant that was cut or broken and now has roots on it. Which means I can officially call my broken Cascadia petunia fragments... "Cascadia Rootings." Woot!

A couple weeks ago, heavy rain knocked a couple branches off the Cascadia Petunias. I stripped the leaves off the ends of two of them and stuck them in dirt. They were green a long time but eventually one died. So I pulled the other one out of the dirt because it still looked living and dropped it in a dish of water, which is now called the Mini Pond.

The Mini Pond was just a puddle of rainwater in a gardening dish into which I dropped a couple plants that needed care.
Weeks have gone by and I'm still lacking in time/knowledge/terra cotta pots/ice tea/personal backhoe/whatever in order to plant them. So there they stay.

The Mini Pond is turning into a veritable ecosystem. I didn't plan on keeping it more than over night, but so far, three broken petunias and two Jade plants are thriving in it. I accidentally spilled a little soil mixture into the dish so maybe that provides a little nutrition to the plants. The petunias now have tiny roots at their broken ends. Yay! I'll keep them in the dish until the roots are long enough to plant. The whole thing will get dumped if I see one squirmy mosquito larva though.
...thinking...
I suppose I could get a bigger dish and a goldfish to keep the mosquitoes in check...
Hmm, does this mean I'm starting a water garden? In a dish on the picnic table? That's an exciting concept.

Next year, I'm going to buy red Cascadia Petunias as well as white. The red sure does brighten up the deck. You can see a Red Cascadia at the right hand edge of this photo.
Once the patio is finished, we'll have a couple big planters of red and white cascadia petunias along with more geraniums and ferns.

Most exciting is counting SEVEN new buds on the Pat Austin. I can't wait till that one blooms again! I wonder if each successive wave of Pat Austin blooms will increase the number of blooms as the summer progresses? At what point does a rose bush stop making roses? None of the other roses are faring as well as the Pat Austin. The three Fair Baincas have no new buds. The Scepter'd Isle on the deck has a couple tiny new ones. One Scepter'd Isle by the road had lots of buds but I don't know what happened to them. The last Scepter'd Isle by the mailbox is constantly getting munched by the, ahem, deer.

Almost as exciting as seeing new Pat Austin buds is getting a little peek at our first tomato ripening on the plant on the deck.
Sweet!

Na, na, na, na-na. Take that, you ravenous deer. You can't get my tomatoes, green peppers or cucumbers. You can't get my Pat Austin, Scepter'd Isle or Fair Bianca. Ha!

The Art of Lawn Mowing

I've finally figured out the Art of Lawn Mowing. It goes like this...

First you buy an expensive mower. I'm not sure why.
The ads all say "Do you want to be the envy of your neighbors? Just buy this nifty model..." I doubt my neighbors will ever be impressed with my expensive mower. My neighbors all have nifty mowers worth more than my car.

After you get the expensive mower, you're supposed to impress your neighbors with your neat and tidy rows of mowing. I saw that in a picture once. It said your mowing rows should look like this:

l l l l l l l l l l
l l l l l l l l l l
l l l l l l l l l l
l l l l l l l l l l

So of course I tried it. I mowed like this:

l l l l l l l l l l
l l l l l ... and then there was a stick. So I kicked it out of the way while my mower kept moving and went around like this: C

I continued going l l l l l and then there was a rock. So I threw it out of the way while my mower churned up dirt and went around like this: C

My expensive mower has one of those power drives so I have to keep it slow enough for me to walk, not run behind. If you're going even a teensy bit too fast, when you go around even a little obstacle, the centrifugal force is frightening. This afternoon, while mowing around little obstacles, I almost got thrown off my mower a couple times. And it's not even a riding mower!

Most of those little obstacles were rare, young flowers so I mowed around them like this

l l l l l lOl l l
l l l l Ol l l l l
OOl l l l l l l
l l l l l l O l l

They were rare until I discovered a huge rangey mass of them by the edge of the woods. Which made it obvious they were neither flowers nor rare. So all my carefully mowed-around O's had to go.

I think this is where the neighbors are supposed to be impressed. First, it takes great skill to mow like this:

l l l l l l l l l
l l l l l l l l l
l l l l l l l l l
l l l l l l l l l

It takes even more skill to mow like this:

l l l l C l l l l
l lOl l l l C l
l C l O l C l
COOCOOC

(That last row is where there are lots of sticks and rocks and faux rare flowers to mow around.)

The final step in the Art of Lawn Mowing takes the touch of a real artist's hand. Carefully preserving rare flowers that are actually weeds means executing the final mowing technique. If your neighbors weren't impressed before, they will be now as they watch sublime mowing like this:

888888888
\9\C888/88
////888888
889999/C/O
8989898989

It usually takes the mower on the Rose Support Team one fill-up of gas to mow the entire backyard. This afternoon, I mowed half the backyard. And then the gas tank ran out. Which means I must be really impressing my neighbors with my artistic mowing technique and I'd say I've mastered the Art of Lawn Mowing.

Rain, rain, go away...

Rain, rain go away...



It's been raining all day without letting up.


All the Cascadia Petunias are sighing and hanging their heads.

The small Jade Plant was so waterlogged, I had to take it inside and prop it up with a plastic fork till it gets its spine back.


Rain, rain, go away, please come back some other day, after we've had a full week of sunshine so I can water all the plants with Miracle Grow.

Sunday, right before the storm rolled in, I finally had a new batch of soil/composted manure/peat moss to pot up the cucumbers. They were dreadfully rootbound. The photo isn't clear because I was hastening the process less I got struck by lightning. Plus, rogue raindrops were pelting. Does holding a camera make one more of a lightning target?



Of course, after taking this photo, I had to work really fast getting the six cucumbers, three geraniums and remaining Red Cascadia potted up before the downpour. What a rush! What excitement! What dirt-slinging, thunder-cracking thrill!

The only pots available for the cucumbers were the occupied geranium pots.


Which meant I had to remove the geraniums and plant them in bigger pots.

Which meant I had to make room next to the last Red Cascadia for one of the geraniums.








All in all, having the 10 plants exchange pots with each other, with no one left out, before being hit by lightning, worked out just fine.

Fleeting Beauty and Dew

[Note: clicking on any of the photos in my blog will usual open up a larger version. Make sure you click on the photos in this entry to see the closeups.]

The fleeting part is being so busy that I can't stop to either smell or watch the roses grow. I miss having the luxury of standing amongst my beauties to enjoy their splendor. The past week or so, all the roses have gotten from me is a quick "Ah, you're still there, gotta run" or "How pretty! Gotta run!" or "Good, you're not dead, gotta run."

This morning I was up earlier than usual and stole the minutes it took to take some photographs of flowers all dewed up.

Here's a photo of the free Red Cascadia Petunia that Springhill sent me. They actually sent three red Cascadias when I told them one white petunia (out of 15) never grew. Getting three red Cascadias was a super sweet consolation! Now that I see how pretty the red petunias are, I'm planning on getting some next year. The dew really sparkles on the red Cascadias. Click on the photo to see a larger version.

The Cascadia Petunias are amazingly gorgeous. The three red ones are still young so they aren't all sprawled out yet like the white ones. Once they grow even bigger, the weight will cause them to cascade down over the railing. Seeing a six foot long waterfall of white petunias is going to be way cool. Alas, since the deck faces a farm field out back, only the deer will get to enjoy the petunia waterfall all summer. I'll just have to drag my guests down to the backyard so they can turn around to see the petunias. Yep.



There are about five different shades of pink/coral geraniums in the boxes with the white petunias on the deck railing. This is one of the more pale ones.



I finally figured out which miniature roses to mourn, now that most have bloomed. By process of elimination, I've been able to figure out the dead roses are: Orange Honey, Green Ice and Sugar Plum. Rats, I really had my heart set on seeing Orange Honey and Green Ice. All three dead roses were crucial to my color schemes in the pots too.

Toy Clown doesn't have buds yet. Well, Toy Clown might not have leaves either... I'll have to examine that pot more closely and see if Toy Clown is still living. Earthquake looked too sorry for a photo so I guess it's not the "morning type."

Check out the gorgeous dew on the Rise 'n' Shine miniature rose. This blog has a small version but the full size photo really shows the detail of the dew. It's fascinating how the surface of different flowers holds dew. I may have lost four miniature roses but the ones that did bloom are wonderful!

If I had known how easy it was to get a plant in the ground, I would have planted them in a more timely fashion.

...thinking... ...no, better make that:

"If I had known how easy it was to get a plant in the ground, I would have planted them sooner," she said while there were... ahem... no less than THIRTY FOUR angry plants on the deck impatiently waiting to get out of their teensy, shipping containers... Gasp! Two flats of flowers are actually leaning away from each other in claustrophobic faints... panting, panting for more space.


I better add Potting Soil and Composted Manure to my shopping list this weekend or the plants might do something drastic.

Rise 'n' Shine really is a pretty little yellow rose. I should have put three of these in one pot for a real show on the deck.











Lavender Lace is the biggest of the miniature roses. It's about 1 1/2" across. This rose looks more lavender in mid day light than at sunrise.




















Stars 'n' Stripes seems to put out more buds than the other roses. Today I'll fertilize the three pots of miniature roses and see if that helps them get more blooms.
















Sheri Ann is such a pretty color. It looks less orangish later in the day.




I like how the petals curl into points on the Sheri Ann and Rise 'n' Shine roses.




Ok, seeing these photos has me convinced I'm really missing some important beauty out there.
If I don't have time to plant the plants, smell the roses or watch them grow, my priorities must be outta whack. Time go get out the old TO DO list and see what can be crossed off.
Let's see... scratch off
- - - Wash Floors
- - - Clear Dining Room Clutter
- - - Mail Bills
- - - Drive to Appointments
- - - Work...
There, I'm feeling more optimistic already!

Painting Roses

Literally. That's what I've been doing
to enter a nature-inspired art contest.
I'm not expecting to win but it sure
was fun. I used my own roses as
inspiration. First I printed up a normal photo of three of my roses. Here's a pic of two of them.


Then I played around with the photos and emphasized the edges with editing software. I did this because I can't draw a rose very well. By focusing on the edges of the rose petals, I was able to see how they overlap better.

I cut apart the black & white rose pics, taped them to the back of a sheet of paper canvas and traced the lines.


I loaded my brush with paint and after just one stroke, figured there was no way I could follow all that drawn detail so I just winged it and totally ignored most of my tedious pencil detail. Here's the final painting. It has gems glued on for dew drops but then I found out
attachments weren't allowed so I had to take
them off and paint on dew drops or my
painting would be disqualified. I entered the
gem version as Entry #1, the non-gem version
as Entry #2.


Then I found out that I was only allowed to use 6 colors or less, and it was implied that meant including any blended colors. Not stated in the rules. Hmmph. Which meant my first two paintings were probably disqualified.
Double Hmmph.


So I made another entry that pretty much
follows my drawing and didn't use shading or
blending of colors. After painting, I erased all
my pencil marks. I really like how it turned
out and did a little whoop-de-do dance
when it was done. I'm stoked!

Then I found out that one of the rules states it was supposed to be emailed by 6 pm tonight which means it was probably disqualified. The other rule states midnight as the deadline so I hope the judges use Rule #2 - Midnight deadline.

Anyway, I'm not expecting to win. But it sure
was a heap of fun to paint! And if I do win, I'll
get a 5 day trip to California! Woot!