21 December 2007

Solstice

Not to be an asshole about it, but I just can't deal with these "blogging" "meme"/chainmail things. I've been doing this for a long time, and if I have something to say, I'll say it. So I have to apologize to Eurica for dropping her ball, but I do want to say this: it is easy to forget that there is anything good about the internet, but I am very thankful for the ability to learn about people on the the other side of the planet, and their amazing plants. Check out Eurica's awesome pictures of Aloe marlothii and her husband Rudi in a Namibian copper mine at the link above.

I also avoid the garden blog bloom day thing because this entire blog is about what's blooming in my garden. I don't need a special day for it.

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Anyway, when you live somewhere buried under a couple feet of ice this time of year, you imagine that all you want is a little bit of winter color. And the lemon tree does fulfill that role admirably. But when you live here, you still want flowers, because you're an unsophisticated philistine who can't be content with the timeless grace of foliage when there's shiny sex organs to display. Those of you in colder climes might not be familiar with the flowers of the Jade tree, which looked like this in my neighbor's yard this morning. Yeah, I said tree: it's about 8 feet tall.

Anyway, when I was poking around this morning, I have to admit it suddenly hit me how amazing it is to have so many things blooming on the shortest day of the year: Abutilon, Bougainvillea, Brugmansia x candida, Fatsia japonica, Fuchsia, Gardenia [!!11!], Impatiens niamniamensis (ok, that finally dropped its floweres and looks pretty sad, but I swear it was blooming last week), the lemon tree, Passiflora manicata, a bunch of Salvias and the awesome Satureja mexicana that never stops flowering, Silene, Zinnias (still, though they look like crap now)... How lucky am I?

Not lucky enough, it turns out, to have a Protea flower yet. I got a little carried away by what is actually a bunch of leaves (though in my defense their hirsute emergent leaf margins look a lot more like nascent bracts than the glabrous mature leaves):

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5 Comments:

Blogger lisa said...

I feel you on the memes...they get old real fast!

12/26/2007 10:59 AM  
Blogger Gardener of La Mancha said...

Sorry about your bud.

I had the opposite dissapointment with my Darlingtonia earlier this year. I saw a pink scaley thing growing horizontally that I thought was a new growth on the rhizome. It eventually righted itself and turned into flower. It was really cool, but a rhizome would have given me more hope that the plant was going to make it in the long run.

1/07/2008 9:02 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Don't give up hope, GoLM (or should I call you Pancho?): the llittle handout they gave me with my Darlingtonia said "RESPECT WINTER DORMANCY".

1/09/2008 12:04 AM  
Blogger Gardener of La Mancha said...

Would you call Batman "Robin"?

1/14/2008 8:04 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Sorry, just joking.

But is not Sancho also a man?

1/15/2008 5:30 PM  

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