And now there are four!
Top left: Alfresco
Middle low: Joker
Middle top: Rozetta
And the newest to bloom is upper right: Harlequin.
What a beautiful day!
And right behind Joker, here's Alfresco and Rozetta. How beautiful!!
The one just to the right of Rozetta is Harlequin with 2 buds. Maybe tomorrow.
(Click on the images to enlarge.)
Remember those Amaryllis buds I showed you at Thanksgiving? Here's Joker in bloom.
Gorgeous!!
I'm so excited. It's blooming!!
It started out as two or three tiny green pieces of foliage last April. I thought it would never make it.
A friend heard that I'd lost the one I'd had for many years, one that was my mother's and her mother's before her. I think that plant was about as old as I am.
Anyway. It simply died, probably of old age.
So she gave me a couple of pieces of one she had.
I'd had my mother's schlumbergera since '95. I'm not a very good keeper of plants, particularly old ones that are already set in their ways. Even so, I kept it alive for 15 years, though it rarely bloomed and hardly grew at all.
When I was given the tiny pieces of foliage back in April, well, I had my doubts but I couldn't say 'No' to a gift giver and besides you already know how I feel about plants: the exact same way you feel about them.
So . . .
I placed my bits of foliage in a pot on my kitchen window sill and ignored it pretty well for awhile. Soon I began to see some tiny little sprouts coming from the pieces of foliage and though I was afraid to touch it, I continued to watch. All summer long, I watched and I watered sparingly and I waited. It continued to grow and multiply.
Then I read Songofjoy's article and in it she said the Christmas cactus should be placed in a room that gets only natural light starting about September. The natural light cycle would encourage it to bloom.
Well now. I have several rooms that aren't used much so I placed the little plant in one of them and closed the door. It was sometime in September.
When my daughter came to visit around the middle of November, I realized the little cactus was in her room and needed to be moved if it didn't want to get lost amid the debris of a daughter.
I moved it back to the kitchen counter.
Like magic, I began to see little buds appear, first one then two and suddenly I counted five! Oh boy! I was so excited. I hadn't killed it, it had grown lush and full considering how tiny those little bits and pieces were in the beginning.
So now, here it is. A real live Christmas cactus. The blooms are sparse, but who cares! It's grown and multiplied and it's blooming.
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I'm so excited!
Thanks, Song, for the great information in the article. Without it I probably would still be whining about no blooms!
Truthfully, the fact that I don't usually let meat enter my mouth makes me a poor promoter of the popular turducken. You probably shouldn't even read this blog.
The turducken mostly receives rave reviews, particularly by those who are advocates of eating our fine feathered friends. Not being one of them, words from me should be ignored or taken with a grain of salt. (Heh, intended pun.)
So the turducken entered my life early on Thanksgiving Day, brought in by my son and wrapped in a mesh of strong cord as if it were going to take flight as soon as the cord was cut. I soon realized it had no wings, nor did it have bones. It was flightless, spineless, wimpy. In spite of its exotic name, a turducken is simply three boneless birds, the chicken stuffed inside the duck stuffed inside the turkey. There was no room for anything else, except a dab of dressing here and there and maybe a flake or two of pepper filling up cavities.
As he had promised, my son set about getting it ready for the oven. I could barely look at the alien thing, and for sure couldn't bring myself to touch it, so he was more than welcome in my kitchen.
I had already baked my weight in sausage/cheese balls so as long as the turducken was in the oven and out of my sight, i figured I might as well be preparing the rest of the meal. Red skinned potatoes went in the cooking pot, green beans went into the steamer. My soon to be daughter in law brought the makings for homemade mac and cheese, a favorite of my 7 year old grandson and me. I prepared the dressing, lots of sage, and since there was no stock from the turkey, I used canned chicken broth to moisten it. The fruit was peeled and mixed the night before. Everything came together at about 5 p.m.
Now you have to understand. I not only don't eat meat, I don't look at it either. Well, that's not exactly totally true, I can look at the dark brown baked or fried or otherwise well done outer covering of meat; I just can't look at the inside. There's just something about the inside that sends me running.
I couldn't watch him slice the turducken. And I could not look at it sliced. I did however ask him to get a picture of it to show you its insides.
Yep, they all sat at the table and ate, all 5 of them. I very sweetly asked to be excused and I took my plate full of green beans, mac and cheese, mashed red skinned potatoes and every other green and orange thing I could find along with my bowl of fruit and I sat at my computer table and had my meal.
I know. It was totally impolite and callous and unforgivable in everybody else's book, but my children and their friends know me well. They didn't even blink.
Now keep in mind if I'd invited others I would have served something besides turducken so I wouldn't have embarrassed anybody. But this meal was for my children and I would do most anything for them. If you had been here I would have sat down with you right at the table, but we would have had something like black bean burgers or maybe Hetty's nutty casserole or even clam chowder or oyster casserole, but you would not have had turducken, or steak, not even a pork chop.
I meant to have Tee's sprouts ready for the big feast; I thought it would go well with my spinach/orange salad; instead I got all involved with some Amaryllis that were sent to me as a surprise. Craziest things, they were so anxious to get potted up they almost didn't wait till I got them in the soil and now the buds have already formed. I think they're going to bloom before their stalks are even six inches tall. Look at this! It's amazing. They've only been in their pots for about 11 days.
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Isn't that amazing? I keep telling them to slow down but they aren't listening. I think I potted them up on the 15th, I have no idea how long they had been enroute from Texas. I think I'm going to have a 'short' Amaryllis Christmas.
And speaking of Christmas blooms, I have a Schlumbergera with lots of first time buds, but I'll share that with you next time.
See how easily I can change topics? I'd much rather talk about plants than turduckens, but I promised somebody I'd tell them about the boneless wingless triple bird. I always mostly keep my promises. My children and their guests said it was very tasty. That's about all I can tell you about the turducken.
They've turned the Christmas lights on all over my neighborhood. It was 70 degrees today and I guess this was the day to light up our homes. As usual, somebody forgot to tell me and tonight as I stepped outside I could see that I'm the only undecorated house on this block.
Heh. What they don't know is that I left the lights on my little cedar tree all year, all I have to do is plug them in. Well, the truth is the lights were pushed all the way back to the inside and the tree is full and lush, also very scratchy, so nobody could see those lights and I didn't want the scratches that I'd get if I took them off the tree. I'll just plug them in tomorrow and everybody will say ooooooooh and ahhhhhhhhhh and I won't be disowned by my neighbors. What I'd really like to do is use only purple lights inside and out. I think purple lights would be very pretty especially outside in the dark.
Maybe not. Do they use purple lights at funeral parlors? Or is that mauve?
Who set the standard for red and green anyway? Who made those rules?
I like purple a lot.
~Happy Holidays~
