Bloom
Friday June 04th 2021, 10:43 pm
Filed under: Amaryllis,Garden

Finally got the pictures to come through!

The amaryllises suddenly all decided at once that it was spring. Today there were more.

The Anya seedling from 2020 with the late one that sprouted not quite six weeks ago: actual apricots are going to be awhile yet, but they’re doing their part.

The peaches all somehow still seem to be on the August Pride tree, entirely untouched by critters. Maybe the sweet cherries deflected them? I don’t think I have ever yet actually tasted a peach from that young tree and I’m trying not to get my hopes too high, but I think this is the year.

Over on the knitting front, I’ve been keeping a small project by the bed for when a certain someone is taking his time getting ready to call it a day so that it’s peachy fine with me if he dawdles. Size six needles, a fair number of stitches–it was just something to keep randomly plugging away at.

But a row or two slowly does add up and last night to my surprise I realized that hey–I need to cast this thing off. It’s quite done.

I forgot to take its picture…

 

 



Lockdown day 60
Friday May 15th 2020, 11:05 pm
Filed under: Amaryllis,Family

These turned towards the sun faster than I noticed and so some of the flower stalks from Dad’s bulbs had to be rescued and brought inside. In a vase inherited from my mother-in-law.

My folks and my in-laws were friends clear back to when they were neighbors as newlyweds, and somehow this just feels perfect.



Thank you, Daddy
Monday December 09th 2019, 12:01 am
Filed under: Amaryllis,Family

My dad mailed me amaryllis bulbs every December, and sent me home with six monster bulbs a year ago November when we were there celebrating my parents’ anniversary.

It would be his last time.

The first of those just opened up again today despite being outside while the nights are cold. It is white, and planted in a red pot, one of the nicest I have.

It’s like a bright wave hello from him every time I look up.



Unless another one happens to pop up later
Thursday May 23rd 2019, 7:58 pm
Filed under: Amaryllis,Family

This seems to be the last one for the season: a Red Lion amaryllis, from a bulb Dad gave me several years ago that has now split into three that need to be repotted and given their own spaces. But first they had to celebrate their old one.

Thank you, Dad! Love you!



About 30″
Friday May 10th 2019, 10:25 pm
Filed under: Amaryllis,Family

This one is towering and glorious. Thank you, Dad!



Each day a blessing
Sunday April 14th 2019, 10:22 pm
Filed under: Amaryllis,Family,Life,Lupus

My niece Emily has been in the ICU: she caught the flu, got worse, started barfing and her (tween? Tell me he’s not a teenager yet?) son called my sister and said, Grammy, Mom needs you.

My sister went over and called an ambulance.

Emily’s kidneys had shut down and things were very very bad.

This afternoon she was moved out of the ICU, where she’s been the past week.

Today she ate solid food for the first time. Some.

She feels–well, she’s definitely had more fun than this.

Everything. Everything. Is looking far better than it did. We can start to breathe again.

Today Mom and Dad told us Dad’s in hospice care now. Dad’s favorite caretaker can still come and that made the decision easy.

This is another of the amaryllises from Dad last fall where the TSA thought the bulb was a bomb.

This is not how I usually photograph them and I wondered why I was doing it this way as I snapped another from the same angle rather than changing it. Why… And then I got out of the sun and put it back on the porch and that was that.

I did not see till I went to post the picture: it was taken looking straight down so that the stem that supports the blossoms is out of direct sight–but you can infer where it held the sunlight within itself by how it left only its shadow to our eyes. But it is real, it is there, it is strong against the winds outside, and there where it cannot directly be seen, it holds the glorious colorwork steady.



Can I hear you now?
Thursday April 11th 2019, 10:50 pm
Filed under: Amaryllis,Family,Garden

A few more days and the whole cherry tree should look like this and more.

For my dad: an Apple Blossom amaryllis started opening today.

The Frost peach has been properly thinned, and so has hours of paperwork and housework that had needed to be out of the way before company comes next week.  Sometimes even the disorganized have to crack down and get to it.

The reward is that I found the bluetooth pendant for connecting my cellphone to my hearing aids–it had fallen behind the computer.



Colors of spring
Wednesday March 27th 2019, 10:41 pm
Filed under: Amaryllis,Knitting a Gift

Finished last night at bedtime and hung to dry fast before calling it a night, grateful I got it done in time: Laura’s cowl. Delivered on her last day at Green Planet Yarns.

That amaryllis from last week has a second stalk blooming, and I had no idea that bulb had a twin!

 



Merry Christmas!
Wednesday March 20th 2019, 10:38 pm
Filed under: Amaryllis,Family

An amaryllis my dad gave me for Christmas, celebrating the first day of spring. Thank you, Dad, it’s gorgeous!



From Dad with love
Tuesday February 26th 2019, 11:47 pm
Filed under: Amaryllis,Family

Remember those giant amaryllis bulbs from my dad that the TSA thought were bombs in my carry-on?

We’ve got two flowers open on top with two to go and four open on bottom on this one.



Spring jumpstart
Friday February 01st 2019, 11:18 pm
Filed under: Amaryllis,Garden

More amaryllises! (And a hyacinth.)

Last year I went through the seed catalogs with great visions, as one does. I did plant a few tomatoes, and as a matter of fact one indestructible Sungold next to the house from the year before survived 22F winter nights–again–and is still blooming and producing merrily away. A windstorm blew it backwards two weeks ago but bit by bit it is growing towards the sun again that is likewise reaching out gradually to it.

I looked at all those unused year-old seeds though (Big Boys! Blue tomatoes!) and figured that if I started in January and nothing sprouted then I wouldn’t have lost much time. And if they did, they could be in pots for awhile inside the Sunbubble; I might as well put that heat to the most use I can, right?

Look who just showed up. Now that I’ve got an extra bag of soil so I can put it in something bigger than a used creme brûlée pot. I can’t remember if this is the zucchini or a Waltham butternut, but either way this little squash needs more legroom stat. If anything comes up in that bigger pot over there then I’ll have (at least) one of each.

Knowing that squirrels sometimes go after new sprouts, I brought it inside for the night. No munching on my seedling. This one’s mine.

Edited to add, I posted this and then looked more closely: two! Two Big Boy tomatoes came up today when I wasn’t looking!

Tiny little things.



Do not open before Christmas
Friday December 07th 2018, 10:11 pm
Filed under: Amaryllis,Family,Lupus

My dad sent us home from our visit last month with my suitcase stuffed with six really big amaryllis bulbs. (Pro tip: the TSA machine reads those as bombs.)

What they needed was fresh soil and big heavy pots to keep the future multiple sun-tracking stalks from knocking them over sideways. Hopefully. Which is fine, except that I just wasn’t looking forward to that trip down the freeway, much though I like supporting Yamagami’s. It’s a great nursery with a lot of pre-Silicon Valley history to it.

And part of that foot-dragging was UV-sensitive hours vs our rush hour that starts just after 2:00; December is safer lupus-wise for walking around outdoors than November.

Meantime, in the nice warm house two of them started to sprout a few days ago so I cut holes in their bags and turned them over to un-tilt their sense of direction.

Found a third one starting to sprout this morning. The middle one. It did all that in under 24 hours. Okay, that’s it, time to get going, yay for December, and Yamagami’s once again impressed me with what good people they hire.

Opening the fourth bag, I’d had no idea that bulb in the foreground had even come out of dormancy.

You can tell.

Oops.

Dark red, wine, white, pink/red/white, with the bags tucked under each for now so I can remember which is which.

Thank you, Dad! Can’t wait! Now that they’re finally planted the little kid in me is like, so BLOOM now! C’mon guys, hurry up!

 



Sawdust to sawdust
Tuesday November 13th 2018, 10:12 pm
Filed under: Amaryllis,Family,Life

With all six kids gathered round (thank you Frontier for selling $87 Atlanta-Salt Lake no-luggage round trips) Dad offered a Christmas present dear to his heart: four amaryllis bulbs each, and not just any amaryllises but ultra-large mother bulbs. For us two coming-birthday girls it was six.

Good thing my luggage on the way there had included a giant tub of extra-ripe dried apricots from Andy’s Orchard for the folks so I didn’t take an underseat suitcase and I had some space freed up for the way home.

(Hey, Andy, if you see this? My brother echoed my dad’s reaction: “Those are *gooooood*!” He definitely wanted to know where to find more and I was happy to pass your website on to him.)

But the bag. It was still just a carry-on and I was sure the TSA would want to look at those. They definitely did. I seemed harmless, but that way-overstuffed suitcase had to come open even as I was telling the guy what he’d seen on the screen were.

“Those ARE big amaryllis bulbs!” he said in wonder, holding one high for the other agents to see. Clearly he was familiar with such. He dug through and pulled out each of the others in turn just to be sure, though–his peers were present–which is how I found out that the sawdust the bulbs were bagged with could pepper-shake out all over everything. That makes sense: bulbs are living things and need to breathe.

I may have bought them second-hand on swap.com and the like for $5-$10 each, but still: those were my cashmere sweaters he was freely coating with that stuff, and my favorites to boot. Y’know, what you wear to look good around your siblings and their kids.

I’d previously put them through the hand wash cycle on my Speed Queen, which didn’t shrink them any, but the higher-than-average speed of its spin meant the ends of the hairs had worked their way free and gained an angora bunny look and now those wisps of goat fur were grabbing hard onto that sawdust. Later, I could not shake it all out.

Fortunately, it turns out that washer could. Speed Queens are magical.

Just in case you ever, say, visit a lumber mill in a cashmere sweater.



The consensus is…
Tuesday May 22nd 2018, 10:35 pm
Filed under: Amaryllis,Knit,Politics

The Spartacus bulb opened up, and at 30″ high with a full display of leaves it is rocking this amaryllis thing.

The second cowl from the orange Piuma: done. (Note to self: 84 stitches, US 8 needles this time and it’s not small.)

Did anybody else get the annual Community Survey from the Census Bureau? Three million households randomly get chosen and this was our year.

After making sure I couldn’t get the info online, I called the city’s utilities department and said, I’m sure you’ve gotten a lot of people asking the annual total of their water+sewer and their electric and gas usage for the Census–and they said, Nope! You’re the first one.

I wonder how many people the Bureau chose out of any one town? And how much any answer of mine tilted the results.



Spring cleaning
Thursday May 03rd 2018, 10:30 pm
Filed under: Amaryllis,Life

I need to get back to the knitting. Something about being away awhile makes tackling the house the most important thing, though, and the recycling bin is full again a day after pickup. Man, that felt good.

What felt less good is that the refrigerator was either slightly bounced open those five days or else the thing is dying after 25 years. Which it may well be. I moved both its settings to coldest and threw out a lot on Tuesday but today the cheese was green–and yet things at least seem cold enough now. (Do we trust those eggs?)

Wait–typing that it finally hit me: I have that infrared temp sensor! I got up and aimed for the back of the fridge as the door opened. 34.1, 40 at the front. Okay, I think we’re good, I just have to find and get rid of anything else that might have been damaged and just start over.

Meantime, the amaryllis-scape for the day.