Boxing Day, at long last. In reality, there are a couple more weeks of Christmas-related events and music, but in my mind, Boxing Day is when stores and advertisements stop playing Christmas music, and the poinsettias get thrown out, and the Schlumbergeras get put on clearance if they're going to be, and the whole world just returns to normal after three months of force-feeding me red-and-green glittery holiday cheer. So Boxing Day is, like, the most wonderful day of the year to me. Hope everyone else is enjoying it too.
Oh! Speaking of force-fed glitter -- you know those spray-painted poinsettias, that have blue bracts, or purple, or whatever, usually liberally sprinkled with glitter besides? I saw green ones this year. Seriously. Someone went to the trouble of growing up a bunch of poinsettias, kept them under darkness for the prescribed number of hours per day so they would flower and their bracts would turn red (or possibly white: it's hard to tell for sure), and then spray-painted the bracts green. The color they would have been anyway.
A line of some sort has been crossed, here.
But anyway. None of this is the point of the post; there is an orchid to be looked at. I don't have a lot to say about it, but I like the color. Comment or don't.
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Meanwhile, all kinds of things have happened over the last week -- lots of random blooming going on, just like last year (also, also, also). Winter is a curiously eventful season for indoor gardening.1 So I spent a lot of the hiatus writing posts in advance, and therefore haven't really had a winter break yet, but I will, eventually.
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1 (Especially by comparison to outdoor. At least in Iowa it is.)
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6 comments:
Looks like that orchid is just finishing materialising in our dimension. Lovely.
Green Poinsettia? Is this some sort of Rule 34 of plant nurseries?
The green poinsettia is absolutely absurd. I already hate the ones spray-painted blue and purple. When I came home from college a few days ago I actually found a large white poinsettia that had been thus abused in my parents' sitting room. I was slightly shocked at first but it turns out my mom saw it on sale and felt so bad for it that she decided to take it home and give it a chance to outgrow the glitter.
I know what you mean -- my indoor plants (here in NYC) are continuing to flourish, despite (or because of) the ineffectualness of my attempts to moderate the radiant heat that suffuses so many old buildings here. (I never cease to enjoy the irony that in the frigid northeast winters, one is always overly warm inside, while in the balmy winters of Houston, one is always freezing, because the houses aren't built to hold in heat -- so even when it's 50 outside, you feel like it's 50 _inside_.)
In fact, one of my phaleanopsis, which I'd gotten in early summer and which finally dropped their flowers in October, decided to start blooming again! Unfortunately, in moving some plants around I accidentally broke off the top of its gently arcing stem. I put the blossom-containing 10-inch or so fragment in a glass of water, and, much to my surprise, those buds are swelling more each day, as if absolutely determined to go out with a bang and not a whimper (or an accidental beheading). It will be interesting to see if the flowers do manage to pop out!
Oops, that was meant to be "phalaenopsis." Sorry.
I love the idea of College Gardener's mother rescuing the poor abused poinsettia. But I wonder how the poor things can survive after having been painted and glittered to death...the plant equivalent of tarring and feathering.
That poinsettia makes me mad.
Lol'd at the green poinsettia. Of all the absurd things!
Welcome back! :)
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