Dragon's Orchid Garden

Plants put on spectacular shows in their efforts to attract pollinators, much like some humans.  One of the strangest is Ceropegia sandersonii, or parachute vine.  This plant belongs to the milkweed family.  We almost lost ours to the extended Florida freeze this year, but managed to save part of the undamaged vine.  The flower looks very much like a parachute: From Dragon's Orchid Garden From Dragon's Orchid Garde Another oddball denizen of our backyard is a Stepalia gigantea, gifted to us by our friend Carl. It's another member of the milkweed family. Its flowers give it the popular name "Giant Carrion Flower".  We have several of them now, as they root easily from cuttings.  Fetid flowers form from large buds on the leafless succulent branches, attracting flies with their stink.  I really don't recommend you stick your nose in one of these... From Dragon's Orchid Garden From Dragon's Orchid Garden Orchid flowers can easily com...

Every year about this time the Voodoo Lilies begin to grow.  They were here when we bought our house in 1992, and have since been moved to another part of the garden.  In 1992, there was no garden, just dirt and sand and these odd tubers. I've since found information about them in several books.  We are gradually making our little backyard into our vision of a tropical paradise.  In this vision, strange flowers, night bloomers, odd shapes and weird inflorescences abound.  Voodoo lilies, also popularly called devil's tongue, corpse flowers or arum, are related to Jack-in-the-pulpit and Amorphophallus titanium (Titan Arum). The Titan Arum first flowered in the western hemisphere at the New York Botanical Gardens in August 1937.  According to Bizarre Plants by William A. Emboden, "Visitors other than scientists and reporter-photographers were so numerous that they had to file by the greenhouse and view the the 'beast' through the glass panes.  Had they...

I am introducing Dr. Mack Hicks, author of Digital Pandemic  tomorrow at the library.  He will be there signing and talking about his new book.  As a psychologist, his concern is that our immersion in digital technology has caused us to become increasingly reclusive.  In the book, he lays out a plan whereby we can regain our connection with ourselves, others and our environment.  I do plan to read the book, but only found out I was doing this 4 days ago.  Tonight, I quickly painted this t-shirt to wear (we're allowed casual wear on Fridays and weekends).  It would have come out better if I'd used iron on letters.  I hand painted it and it's not very applelike (meaning perfect).  It occurs to me that an outline of a book with a bite taken out of it would be a great logo.  I'll do another one and take more time with it.  Thanks to Robert Balliot, Ocean State Librarian , for the phrase.

What would be more embarrassing than having a parade of servers veer toward your table clapping and singing a cheezy Happy Birthday ditty, you...trying to look inconspicuous and failing miserably?  How about having your wife post a blog that's all about the wonderfulness of you?  Yep, that should do it. Today is the birthday of my husband, best friend, love of my life, my Nailcakes.  Wayne is more handsome today than the day I met him.  Exhibit A: Wayne can do anything.  He can build a pond, fix his truck (not mine, it's new and requires a computer to figure out what's wrong and computers are not his thing), play nurse to sick cats, and repair a cuckoo clock.  He reminds me to take my vitamins, eat, wake up, stop playing that stupid game!  He gave me two great kids, with no effort required on my part.  They came with the deal.  If I'd gone through labor pains with them (thanks to their mom for that), I'd love them no more than I do now. ...

I was going to post about awful library patrons.  I will, but later, when the current installment has finished.  Ms. WildHairScreamingConspiracyWoman is not yet done.  She will be back.  A trespass order may be issued.  Stay tuned. Instead, there are wonderfully bad books to focus on.  Mary and Holly are two librarians who've written a blog in homage to bad books.   Awful Library Books  is funny and interesting, giving particular and peculiar insight into the buying habits of Collection Development Departments past.  Revel in such titles as " Hug a Tree : and other things to do outdoors with young children".  Read the insightful commentary on this and other books, weeded (or the preferred term, "deselected", ugh) from library shelves. The following are not awful books.  Or, they may be, but I cannot comment on their awfulness, or lack thereof because I haven't read them.  Fun with keyword searching of the library catalog : ...

I've been off work this week.  My vacation (and one county furlough day) was mostly spent cleaning out closets, getting ready for a yardsale on Saturday.  It was beautiful weather and I got a sunburn but that felt good because it's been such a long stretch of awful weather (I don't expect sympathy from anyone living north of Florida).  We made enough to go to the Tampa Bay Orchid Society 's Annual Orchid Show and Sale at the Egypt Shrine Temple today. We came away with 7 new orchid plants.  We always vow to buy just one or two.  That never works. We came home with a phalaenopsis - KV Golden Star, laeliocattleya - Love Knot 'Blackberry' x c. Bactia 'Grape Wax", a vanda - Mimi Palmer,  another phal. - Glory, a tiny otz (oncidium x Rodriguezia x Tolumnia) Chantilly Mist x RCDM Apple Blossom, and two very unusual orchids, one a dendrobium Spectabile and the other is a grammatophyllum scriptum.  The last one, the "gramm", is related to the world...

It started as a hole in the ground with water in it.  We wanted our Butterfly Peacock Bass, Jack, to live there since he was too big for his indoor aquarium.  He didn't make it, but two koi and a pleco have done well except for the time the big white koi decided to try his hand at air breathing and jumped out.  Luckily, Wayne was there to scoop him back into the water.  This was probably a sign that all was not quite right with the living environment.  Apparently, one should have proper filtration, maintain a certain PH, feed koi on a certain schedule depending on water temperature and make sure the pond water does not resemble pea soup. Granted, these are not pedigree koi.  They're Petco koi, the kind of inbred scanky koi that are sneered at and made fun of by their expensive cousins at Pondscapes .  But, they deserve a life and to that end, we've undertaken a project to educate ourselves on how to keep them and the hole in the ground healthy. ...