Tags

, , ,

Like much of the US right now, we are experiencing some very cold weather this week along with a little bit of fresh snow. It’s quite a difference from the weirdly warm and rainy weather we had earlier in January. The beautiful foot of snow that fell here on January 6th and 7th was all but gone by the 12th, victim to near 50 degree temperatures and over an inch of rain. I’m thankful for the few inches of snow that fell yesterday and the protection they’ll provide the gardens during the next few Arctic-like days! (Especially since our Christmas tree, whose branches I typically clip to cover the most delicate plants in my garden, is still sitting, intact, on the front porch!)

Baby, it’s cold outside when the rhododendron leaves curl up like this to protect themselves against the chill!

But surely you didn’t come here to talk about my weather! I think maybe you’d rather see some pictures of bright, cheerful flowers, yes? Here then, in celebration of both Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day and the Ten Days of Plantness, are the blossoms in my house this week, none of them unusual for me in the post-holiday lull of mid-January:

Primroses — As soon as I flip the calendar to January each year, I start scouting the grocery stores for primroses. They’re cheap and cheery, and I cherish their happy faces on my kitchen windowsill when I do the dishes! So far I have five; there will no doubt be one or two more after my next grocery trip!

Don’t you feel happier now just for having looked at them? I can generally keep them blooming for three or four months by regularly deadheading them, keeping them watered (they get thirsty fast and often need water every other day!), and fertilizing them regularly with a bloom booster. Their window faces west, and by the time May rolls around, the sun and heat coming through that window become too strong for them. Sometimes I’ll pot up a few into a larger container and put them on the shady front porch, but, honestly, most of them end up in the compost bin. I know I could plant them outdoors and maybe they’d settle in and live on as perennials, but I’ve just never felt moved to do that. Maybe this year. (Probably not.)

Crown of Thorns–When my children were young, they loved watching Penguins of Madagascar. One day I was browsing the plant section of Home Depot (or maybe Lowe’s) when I came upon this plant with a label proudly proclaiming, “I come from Madagascar!” Of course I had to bring it home, “for the kids”! That makes this Euphorbia milii, commonly called crown of thorns, at least seventeen years old. It’s quite tall, and its legs are mostly bare, but it ALWAYS has these sweet, perky little flowers, all year round. It lives by the sunniest, west-facing window our house has and spends summers on the mostly sunny back deck.

Euphorbia milii — In the winter, I see variation in bloom color that I can’t account for.
This yellow crown of thorns is a much newer plant (about 4 years, I think), and is also in constant bloom.

Pointsettias — After dropping one particularly lovely one (it featured to-die-for marbling on its red bracts) on the floor on Christmas morning, I am left with two pink plants, one in a four inch pot with variegated shades of pink, and a larger one that is a pure, solid pink. Both still look nice, and I won’t mind having them around through Valentine’s Day. I cannot be bothered to save them from year to year. Poinsettias are toxic to pets, but I have never seen either of my cats try to nibble on one. 

This arrangement of the pink poinsettia with the purple African violet and purple streptocarpus was particularly fitting during Advent! These plants are situated under a halo style grow light on top of the piano.
This pretty pink baby was a gift from a good friend. 

African Violets — With a dozen in my collection, it’s pretty rare that I don’t have one or more in bloom. Right now there are three, all purple. 

You’ve already seen this one, with the variegated poinsettia. It is a descendant of a violet my grandmother had. I’ve separated the main plant so many times, I no longer remember which is which! It is my most prolific and reliable bloomer.
Another descendant of Grandma’s violet, just getting started.
This one, S. Rupicola, is also a fairly reliable bloomer. It’s at the end of its cycle now, having had blossoms since early December.

The violets typically live on a table in front of an east-facing window. They get a tiny bit of direct sun early in the mornings, and bright light the rest of the day. I bottom water them and fertilize them every two to three weeks with a formula designed for African violets.

Cyclamen — I couldn’t resist the delicate pink shading on this specimen at the nursery back in early December! I hope I’ll be able to keep it going and bring it back into bloom; my results with other florist cyclamens have varied. 

There are still a couple of buds coming up on this plant.

Geraniums — I have a small winter garden set up with lights and even some heat mats in the basement, and right now there are quite a few geraniums blooming. When the smaller ones bloom, they get to come upstairs to live with us for a while. 

Amaryllis — It wouldn’t be the dead of winter if I didn’t have an amaryllis to show you, would it? I now have over twenty bulbs in my collection, and have decided to get one or two started every five days. Here’s the first to bloom:

Look at those frills!

This bulb was labeled ‘Double Record’, but I have doubts. Pictures show ‘Double Record’ having wide petals; however, you can see that this specimen’s petals are fairly narrow. I wonder if it’s really ‘Doublet’, which is very similar in color, but features more narrow petals. I can easily imagine the bulb getting thrown into the wrong bin, especially if they were arranged alphabetically. 

Whichever it is, it certainly has a nice glow about it when the late afternoon sun shines through! 

‘Doublet’ or ‘Double Record’? The world may never know . . .

It really lifts my spirits to have so many cheery blossoms in the house to brighten the doldrums of mid-winter! If you want to see more, pop on over to May Dreams Gardens to see what other bloggers have blooming in their homes and gardens this month! 

Thanks for reading!