Dunno
Monday, 5 February 2018
Light and shadow…analogous to the stock market today?
Musings
Yellow flower day
Sunday, 4 February 2018
We hosted a wee brunch today (for a cozy foursome), then I rested (foot up), and later, well after the (#rubbishweather) rain had stopped, I headed out for a modest walk.
I discovered that I could stride a bit faster than the other day, still with the “good gait.” Yay!
BTW, the first flower (bud) is yellow jasmine (Gelsemium sempervirens is a twining vine native to the tropical New World), and the second is some kind of Mahonia (cultivar/cousin or hybrid of the oregon grape).
Steep and step-step
Friday, 2 February 2018
The heart-shaped leaves of this wall-vine caught my eye. They are small, less than 1.5 inches across.
I also noticed how persistent this weed(?) must be to survive in this sidewalk fissure. Its fronds are petite and delicately serrated-lacy.
The last two days when I’ve been out, I’ve concentrated very hard nearly every walk-step on “motating” with the best gait possible. I can report huge progress on the quality angle…if I go slowly enough, and sometimes if I carefully and slightly overemphasize the heel strike, I think my gait must seem slow-but-normal to anyone watching*. Yay! 😎
* Nothing creepy implied or suggested.
Flower paradigm, two ways
Wednesday, 31 January 2018
This almost-bloom almost made it, then got frosted/frozen, then fell under the control of gravity…then….
Here’s the scenario in my imagination: some rodent (probably squirrel) raided the browned bloom, opening it rather like a pine cone.
This is an art-bloom. Not sure what kind of blossom…poppy?
Plant dyslexia?
Monday, 29 January 2018
These ATL croci have not figured out the timing with the snow. The snow was here…and has been gone a while.
Yet our croci still are a lovely lavender/lilac (perhaps orchid) (but not really violet)…FLOWER-y purple-y color.
BotGardenDaze Days
Friday, 26 January 2018
I’ve been feeling a bit more spry lately (yay!), and today we ventured to the BotGarden to check on the plants and have lunch out.
After eating, we checked out an area that’s been newly hardscaped. For years it had been very underused, to the point of seeming abandoned by the gardeners. As we approached the area, I could see that one of my favorite small beds of succulents and cacti was gone, replaced by a line of boring, identical shrubs.
Oh, no!
HOWEVER, when we got into the redesigned area, whew, the plants from That Very Bed had been planted in many new beds, with vastly expanded square footage.
Whew!
With great happiness, we headed to the orchid conservatory to see what might be in bloom, as OrchidDaze has just begun. [I do not subscribe to their spelling distortion.]
The orchid diversity is stunning. These are tiny and hang down from their vegetation, here perched on a branch.
Compare to this huge branch of many blossoms, all open at once.
And this one is a knock-out for its color…and that it’s the size of a saucer.
Time marches (in Jan)
Wednesday, 24 January 2018
I can tell the day-length is stretching (finally), and it seems these hyacinths can, too.
Do NOT sound it out
Monday, 22 January 2018
I “knew” this plant long before I remember hearing its name. I knew it had nice red berries come autumn. And some bright red leaves. I knew it had stiff woody branches, and no thorns. I knew that the branches were quite rigid, far more than most shrubs.
When I heard the name, I heard coh…toh…neee…assss…ter. Sure, fine. Then, sometime later, I saw the name spelled out, and I tried not to sound it out (as I was told to do, over and over; and over) because I found sounding it out to be misleading.
This is an artistic rendering of a section of an autumnal branch of a cotoneaster. So, again, it’s a distortion of reality…?
Then again, cotoneasters are taxonomically related to photinias. 😎
Tale of three fleurs
Saturday, 20 January 2018
Well, three flower-like fleurs. Visual fleur essence.
First we have plastic mall flowers. A not-field of pseudo-lavender in an upscale mall…actually, former upscale mall…now a fine mall trying to maintain essence of upscale-osity. And a spread of fake lavender, I assume, is supposed to help.
Maybe if support staff sprayed the plastic with real scent? haha 🍀
Found this rose 🌹 on my knee. My blue rose leggings.
Today they went to an afternoon matinee at the upscale mall theaters. Seats are sold reserved now, you know…I didn’t.
Here’s a casualty of the latest snow-and-cold-snap. Poor camellia. The realest flower of the trio got snubbed by MaNachur.
Buck up; tomorrow’s on the way!
High-altitude parasites
Saturday, 6 January 2018
On our wander today, we made it to the BeltLine for a short block or so, then back, a simple loop that was really an elongated rectangle. Somewhere along the way I spotted a twisty-trunked tree festooned with mistletoe that nobody harvested last month. It was a really tall tree, which would make downing the mistletoe difficult, but I bet the real reason there’s so much there is that no one harvested much mistletoe here in the city.