More lovely, soothing portraits from the NY Botanical Garden’s 2024 orchid show. Thanks, once again, to commentor & ace photographer Ema:
And a closing note, which I for one endorse:
“Frost Flowers Forever | Orchids are special and beautiful flowers, and OzarkHillbilly was a special and beautiful soul. He will be deeply missed.”
***********
Now that we all have a little extra bandwidth — and a grave need for distraction: I need more garden photos, jackals! Don’t make me resort to my stash of garden-related news stories…
What’s going on in your garden (cleanup / memories / planning), this week?
War for Ukraine Day 990: Mixed Signals
Jeffg166
If I had it to do over I would have had more orchids. They aren’t nearly as fussy as they are made out to be.
Yesterday I rolled the garden hose up and brought it in.
Turned the heat on last night. It’s 39° this morning.
I have about 65 wild columbines a goodly number of foxgloves and annual poppies in pots all started from seeds collected in spring to plant.
It isn’t raining in Philadelphia. Hasn’t in some time. I am waiting to plant until it starts to rain again.
Rose Judson
I’m STILL waiting to hear whether my mortgage application was approved. Once it is, I’ll start documenting the Great Garden Renovation project I have planned for the coming year. There Will Be Dahlias.
Unless you want photos of houseplants? I’ve got 70+…
Anne Laurie
Houseplant photos would be great! Bet you can show us all some that aren’t so common on this side of the water…
Which reminds me, I better remind the Spousal Unit to rescue his cherished Mrs. Cox geranium from the front stoop & add it to the window collection of sprawly (possibly Skeleton Rose) cuttings from a nameless plant acquired some 30 years ago. I can remember when the first killing frost here just north of Boston came around mid-October, not mid-November!
Chris Johnson
Next week should be the final week (maybe) for having my house painted! I feel like that’s exactly the right thing for this moment. Just in time, I get a make-over and the outside looks as much like ‘a good person’ as I’ve tried to be on the inside. I’ve had shame for not being able to afford this work, and most likely I can’t really afford it but shit, if money goes away I’ll have a clean house rather than just nothing.
Another thing on my mind: I grew up Episcopalian. Through my Mom, my Dad’s a scientist and never went. As soon as I could, I quit going, and nobody did a thing to pressure me. And that church didn’t do a thing either, except keep on keepin’ on being resolutely progressive whether I cheered them for it or not.
And now I get to steal one of their lines. I make stuff that’s free for people to use, and I’ve just begun saying it’s free for you, ‘no exceptions’. Echoes the Episcopalian line, ‘God loves you, no exceptions’. And they mean it.
I’m pretty sure I’m going to be reaching out and making some new friends. Who knows, it might turn out that I can say my ‘no exceptions’, and if challenged I’ll be able to unironically say I’m a ‘Christian’, and my church taught me, and maybe they ought to be listening more closely to what Jesus wanted us to do?
It’s gonna be a heavy, heavy lift if the Trump regime thinks they’re gonna crack down on the wrong kind of CHRISTIAN. That’d be really tricky messaging, I don’t think they can manage it, or even try. And if you buy into the jesus freak stuff you’re a formidable voice of gentleness and good, and the optics of hate beating you up, those optics are horrible.
I’m pretty sure I buy into the Jesus freak stuff. It’s some of his translators I have big questions about. But ya know even he only had twelve agents and one of them was a double…
TBone
@Chris Johnson: 💙 that’s why I’m joining my local Episcopal church where gay people can marry under a roof covered by solar panels. My IBS says “not today,” but I will get there soon and hold hands with the like minded in my community.
Garden note: the forsythia bushes are in bloom from our Indian Summer afternoons. In November. 🤐
Dorothy A. Winsor
Fabulous pictures!
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊 😊 😊
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Joe Falco
I can only speak to my parents’ garden as I currently rent and don’t have a garden of my own. I had dug a portion of the flower bed, divided up the massive amount of daffodil and a few tulip bulbs, replanted some of them then bagged up the rest of the daffodil bulbs to be distributed between friends and co-workers who wanted them. I still have plenty of work ahead when the other flowers finally die down and I can divide those as well, especially the Milk & Wine lilies that have grown massive after my last re-planting about 4 years ago. I did plant some pansies to give the garden a small bit of color for these “harsh” Georgia winters.
kalakal
Lovely photographs.
Thank you
Very cheering.
Clear up after hurricane still going on, also had to dig out the beds next to the house as had siding repair to do. That should be done today. I have a lot of stuff in pots, it will be a relief to get them back in the ground
prostratedragon
“Healing Light,” Karl Jenkins, piano
MagdaInBlack
The second orchid looks like a bag of candy corn. I like it. Thank you for the morning photos 🪴😊
WereBear
@Chris Johnson:
In that area I have a tRump card to play: I was DUNKED and now I’m SAVED.
Their rules. And guess what? I will tell any religious oriented tormenters that I don’t think I’ll be seeing them in heaven.
Any time.
VeniceRiley
My elderly wisp of a lady neighbor had a man in to cut the hedge back to her specifications. Now she can see right in through my glass door.
WereBear
Indoor garden report has good news and bad news. The mini roses need a terrarium. That’s how I grew them indoors before, and it seems to be a requirement. I can’t keep their needed humidity up without it.
But what makes up for it are my African Violets. I have experience with them in my old workplace, which had the right kind of light. Now, I mostly have it, and there’s a minimal supplement of grow lights needed.
My two favorite plants need very different conditions. Oh well. The deer have been taking care of my outdoor rose ambitions, so it was worth a shot.
The inescapable conclusion is that I need to get more African Violets. And the spider plants are tough as nails. All three of these are non-toxic plants, to people and pets. The only kind I dare grow, with the cats.
TBone
@VeniceRiley: sorry you have that too, my neighbors do that constantly here (even the good ones). Sigh…
Spanky
@VeniceRiley: Set up a big screen monitor and play porn.
Geo Wilcox
@TBone: Both my forsythia and lilac bushes have flowers. Very weird.
TBone
From today’s The Marginalian e-letter, section on Oliver Sacks:
The article is worth reading, and I got a surprise pop-up poem today for my “trouble!”
https://www.themarginalian.org/2024/11/08/oliver-sacks-letters-meaning-of-life/
TBone
We’re getting our first rain in weeks and weeks today.
This is the pop-up poem given today at The Marginalian:
SPELL AGAINST INDIFFERENCE
by Maria Popova
The rain falls and falls
cool, bottomless, and prehistoric
falls like night —
not an ablution
not a baptism
just a small reason
to remember
all we know of Heaven
to remember
we are still here
with our love songs and our wars,
our space telescopes and our table tennis.
Here too
in the wet grass
half a shell
of a robin’s egg
shimmers
blue as a newborn star
fragile as a world.
satby
Deleted
TBone
@Geo Wilcox: lilacs? Oh dear…what horticultural zone do you live in?
satby
Lovely orchid pictures ema! I’ve always liked them but never been interested in growing them, so enjoying by proxy is my option.
I have two more rhododendrons to plant because they were on sale for $15 each. It’s 49° here now, going to a high of 64° by this afternoon, so I need to decide where I’m putting them and get them planted today, along with the latest bags of crocus and daffodils bulbs. I still have petunias and tomato flowers blooming, and nothing is dormant yet! I may bring my smallest canna inside to keep growing this winter, as well as my tropical hibiscus, but I’m anxiously waiting for a real frost so I can dig up the rest of the cannas to store and prune my shrubs. We’re still looking at forecasts with no frost for another week
TBone
I was just reminded of my favorite orchid. I can hear the voice of Cary Grant calling Joan Fontaine “monkey face” in the movie Suspicion when I see these amazing creatures. Which came first, the monkey or the orchid?
https://www.marthastewart.com/1530509/monkey-face-orchids
WereBear
@TBone:
This is Spinoza, in action. A favorite for this nature lover :)
WereBear
@TBone: I adore the Marginalian! And the art in the articles are wonderful, too.
BenInNM
We’ve had our first real freeze the last few nights but it’s sunny and supposed to get in the upper 50s. Might get out in the yard a little and do some clean up
Weftage
@TBone: Dammit, most of us can’t write poetry in our first language, much less another.
Thanks for the pointer to The Marginalian. Just subscribed.
TBone
@WereBear: 💚
I have long been a fan and have purchased lovely art things for family and friends from there. I don’t devote as much attention as I should to reading her lovely, thought-provoking, informative, and elegant efforts. I suspect that as things unfold, I will be reading there more often (she is high up on my list of ‘helpers’).
Also, I should have purchased some for myself 😆
TBone
@Weftage: ❤️
BenInNM
@TBone: Thank you for this. It was a comforting read. It looked like there was a lot of interesting links there
JAM
Thanks for the photos, Ema and Anne, beautiful orchids. I will try to send some pics of the native plants I started in milk cartons.
TBone
@BenInNM: 💜
her entire reason for writing is to highlight the great literature and thinkers of our time, and to add her own miracles to the mix.
Sorta like what I clumsily try to do not nearly as capably.
WereBear
Also, on sale today, Never Saw Me Coming: How I Outsmarted the FBI and the Entire Banking System—and Pocketed $40 Million.
It’s not what you might think. Check it out. Whole thing kind of started when the FBI told her that because of her racial category, she was “too stupid” to have come up with this herself, and she got mad.
We need more women getting angry. And I am just in the MOOD.
TBone
@WereBear: Spinoza and Einstein are my two favorite theologians!
TBone
@WereBear: Thanks for adding to my collection of WOMEN ON FIRE DEPARTMENT!
❤️📣🏆🔥
WereBear
@TBone: Members of DH’s family knew Einstein! He loved to vacation in the area.
And yes, he was a very nice man who talked to children.
WereBear
@TBone: Isn’t that the department you gotta call?
When you want something DONE.
TBone
@BenInNM: she sends out a free e-letter. I forgot to say that, along with great literature and thinking, there are always great artists included.
TBone
@WereBear: A
MENFuckin’ A!
TBone
@WereBear: ok, now (and I mean N.O.W.), we need the female Catch Me If You Can movie made of this, starring Margot Robbie.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
We got about a foot of snow since last Wed here in the Denver core, a lot more all around us (I-70 east was closed for a while, not unusual in itself but with the planet baking, rarer, and then I-25 south for a bit).
Now in typical Front Range fashion, it’s gonna be sunny and in the 50s and by tomorrow night, it’ll all be gone…except for the stuff in the shadow of north-facing buildings. That’ll be there until next April.
WereBear
Here’s an option for people who might need an online resource: Quest for Meaning.
If there isn’t a like-minded UU church in your area.
I’m not anti-religion, despite my giant suffering from the fundamentalism kinds. I simply loathe unyielding dogma.
That interferes with the adaptation and EVOLUTION that is our nature, on the macro or the micro scale.
zhena gogolia
@WereBear: Women suck. There, I said it. Women could have stopped Trump.
TBone
@WereBear: I was saving these for later but dang, here we are! Men who talk to children in my Department of Tonic Masculinity and Solace:
https://www.robertleefulghum.com/and-then-what-happened-2024/
Worth every moment!
zhena gogolia
And I see we’re still bashing Biden in the Ukraine threads. Enjoy the Trump regime.
TBone
And furthmore, a favorite female helper:
https://www.aarpethel.com/fulfillment/anne-lamott-reflects-on-turning-70-and-what-lifes-all-about
WereBear
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Oh, those spring moments when everything is a photographic negative :)
WereBear
@zhena gogolia: It doesn’t make any sense in any case, but so many of them are in the grip of their culture.
Hell, men are supposed to be smarter and natural leaders. And we know where most of them have been in this struggle.
My sympathies are with the ones who die. Rescue ethos.
TBone
@WereBear: anyone who voluntarily wears a necktie is most definitely not smarter. Those things are convenient 😆😎
Trivia Man
Yesterday was our annual neighborhood leaf raking. People signed up last week if they wanted it dine. About 30 people gathered and divvied up the houses. Crews of about 6 descend upon each house and take it all to the curb. For the city to compost. I saw a couple houses not on the list that i thought needed it so I free lanced into theirs as well.
Great mix of ages, a few families with little kids and a few of us olds. Pizza after.
Great neighborhood event! Bonus: i really like raking leaves.
TBone
@Trivia Man: I envy you your shoulders.
BenInNM
@TBone: I’ve been looking to expand my reading so I plan on subscribing. Should be able to throw a few bucks her way every month too. I still plan on being engaged in politics, but I also need other thoughtful reading. Helps me appreciate and enjoy my garden (just to bring it back around to the thread 🙂)
Quinerly
@Rose Judson:
YES! Houseplant pictures!!!!
WereBear
@TBone: Considering the original Catch Me if You Can conned Hollywood.
Too.
The Greatest Hoax on Earth: Catching Truth, While We Can
by Alan C. Logan
This is the real story, from a reporter who tracked him for years.
You can’t believe a con artist. They rarely reform. They only make you think they did.
WereBear
@TBone: Might have to bring back the hatpin. Women in the Gilded Age wore those big hats to hide the only weapon they were allowed against attack.
So when the hats got bigger, so did the hatpins.
TBone
@BenInNM: she always includes naturalists alla time 💚
TBone
@WereBear: 😎👒
TBone
@WereBear: 💜🩷😁
The fun of that movie for me was picturing my mom in it, when she was a stewardess on T.W.A. in the 60s.
My first Barbie doll was a flight attendant. Wish I’d saved her!
Trivia Man
@TBone: why a white actress? A key plot point is “you people are too dumb for white collar crime”
TBone
@Trivia Man:
“Robbie”
Trivia Man
@TBone: i do not take my genetic advantages for granted, i have always felt genetically blessed and am grateful. And no day after regret today i am happy to report.
Quinerly
@WereBear:
You gave me a flashback. I got into growing African violets in college. Dropped it when I moved to St Louis for law school. I think I had about 10 and even found a box of stuff related to them (special fertilizer, etc) when I cleaned out the attic of the house I grew up in in 2016. That box had been moved from a 1982 college apt. Geez.
Right now I have one orchid that was gifted to me when I moved here. It was a hand me down from someone who admitted it never bloomed for her. It has bloomed here 3 times in 2.5 years. Sits on the plaster hearth of my kiva style fireplace. Full sun from giant South facing windows. I mostly ignore it. Water once a month. I think it is pot bound.
I have gotten heavily into roses since moving to New Mexico. My best performers are my climbing Sally Holmes (white) and Joseph’s Coats (orange). Frida Kahlo, Old John, and Cinco de Mayo did well. I am very impressed with the dying rescue roses from an asphalt parking lot in Albuquerque in July. I nursed “The Asphalt 5” back to health and they rewarded me late this Fall…..Miracle on the Hudson, Julia Child, a second Sally Holmes, Winnipeg Parks, and Ring of Fire.
I have always been obsessed with cactus and succulents. All my potted ones came inside about 3 weeks ago, along with 9 huge pots of geraniums, begonias, and lantanas that I over winter in the house. I actually moved all my plants here with me…..even my geraniums.
Now you have me thinking about making room for African violets. Hmmmmm……
Quinerly
Gorgeous pics.
If there are any St. Louis/traveling Missouri peeps reading…..Great orchid shows at the Missouri Botantical Garden. As I recall the big one is in March. Miss MoBot!!!! Was an active member for many years.
Quinerly
@Spanky:
I second this idea! Find a copy of the classic 1972 “Behind the Green Door.”
I guess I should now see myself out……
Kristine
Chicago Botanic’s orchid show isn’t until next February/March. I’ll have to go and get some pics.
We’ve gotten some good rains over the last few weeks here in NE Illinois but we’re still officially in drought. Daytime temperatures are still in 50s for the most part, so I did some late season planting. Moved a volunteer dogwood shrub from its point of origin on the fence line to the front yard—I’m not sure what type it is except it’s a red twig variety and yea winter color. I need to mower mulch the leaves—that’s a multi-day job. I made my miniature rose an outdoor plant again and stuck it back in the ground—when I brought it in last winter I got a slew of aphids in the bargain which led to an ant infestation because wow honeydew. The only outdoor plants I’ll be bringing indoors are the three gerbera daisies that started life as one gerbera daisy and may be 5 or 6 next year given how they’ve grown.
Trivia Man
@TBone: 😆
I missed the joke
TBone
@Trivia Man: 💜😎
– Anne Lamott
Gvg
@kalakal: Fridaythey came and picked up the last of my hurricane debris so yesterday I was cleaning up after them. I doubt they finished my whole neighborhood. They come in with the big truck and a trailer, load until they are full, then disappear for another 2 weeks. We didn’t get as much damage and our utility company says we are getting outbid for hiring contractors, which is hard to argue with since clearly other areas have more serious damage. Still, there are huge logs 4 feet in diameter on some properties.
Today I am going to look for a little sod to repair the places the piles were. I was told the sod farms got flooded though so may not get lucky.
My banana shrubs and tea olives are blooming so the garden smells wonderful though, and the weather is great. We got a little rain after a dry period to perk things up. Roses are blooming for color. They like winter.
TBone
@Gvg: TIL of the existence of a creature called “tea olive,” and for that I am grateful.
Wikipedia tells me it smells like peach/apricot and can be used for tea, cakes, and other foodstuff!
WereBear
@Quinerly: If you like roses, African Violets are the indoor version. Fussy, but cycle bloomers. Only takes a few to always have one going at it.
ema
Thank you all!
Chris Johnson
@WereBear: I’m gonna suggest Moscow Rules. Taunting bad guys is wrong. You’re not giving them space to be good. It’s gotta be on them, what they choose.
When your cover is ‘being good, helping others, staying kind’, guess what? That’s not fakery. That’s just you, if you want it to be. The trick is understanding when it is TIME for that. I think the time has come. Fighting didn’t work. More fighting is really, truly just feeding these people the scapegoats they need.
Do not play. Be good, don’t even scheme: there’ll be people doing that, good luck to ’em and don’t ever tell me about it, I don’t want to know. What I don’t know I can’t let slip. Anyone who thinks being a schemer is the only thing one can do is a fool: someone has to build the homes, feed people, take care of what there is left. And for now there’s a lot that is still ours.
I’m serious. Don’t fuck around, if someone is fucking around then distance yourself and you never saw them, don’t rat people out to teach them a lesson: John Cole said that real emphatically and he is right. Become a normie and be good. There’s a huge amount that’s worth doing that cannot be faulted by anybody. The bad guys will have to do a sort of triage and part of that is chasing their scapegoats and part of that is keeping the normies from panicking, which is extremely important whether or not they intend for there even to be FAKE midterms.
Look up Moscow Rules. For us newly minted normies they imply ‘be good, you are not taking point on this’. They imply that in fact we’re Moscow now. I think you’ll find we literally are, but it’s not that simple as total control is not established… there has to be a terror campaign to do that, and they have to be careful not to spook the normies.
I saw two people in my circle who are almost certainly Trump voters, and one didn’t show. They are JITTERY, I’ve known them for years, they’re not okay. They now know I’m on Moscow Rules, that I consider it supremely important to do NOTHING against the regime right now. That I am compliant, that I am focusing on my life and being good. Which is literally true.
I don’t think they had reckoned on that being my take. I know one was very worried about me hooking up with the Episcopalians, being a Christian. Dude was really REALLY afraid for me.
That tells me that, in his silo, he never told me that he believes the stories about the leftists hunting and killing Christians etc etc make up your own crazy story. Never hinted anything like that to me, but panicked when it looked like I might let it slip I was ‘a Christian’, for fear the immigrants would get me or something. You know the kind.
The interesting thing is, this guy is marinated in that silo but is also really interested in hearing from all sides, and what I had to say shook him. That’s how it’s done. To him, I was in grave danger from antifa or something. But the idea of right wing death squads was a total blank to him and it didn’t occur to him that anyone else would be in danger… and yet, there I am, earnestly explaining why I am abandoning all politics and being good 24/7 with no thoughts but for my work, and also why to get health care done NOW and perhaps spend money while it exists…
Yeah, my long time but secret right wing friends are JITTERY. Those who don’t share all the values of the silo, are nervous. And hoo boy, they should be, they done fucked UP.
Quinerly
@WereBear: 💚💚💚💚