I got this at Painters Greenhouse in Old Fort a few years ago. I love the pink side of the leaves.
To my frustration, keeping it inside wasn’t keeping it pink, though. It gradually lost the significant color difference. I assumed that it was similar to my black elephant ear and simply needed natural light to brighten up.
I had pinched a piece to root for a friend and as it grew roots the leaves that actually had been slightly pink died. So, by the time there was enough root to stick in dirt and I was going to see her soon, it just looked like a regular syngonium with the barest blush on one side of those leaves.
I took the big pot outside when I potted the cutting and left them both outside for a while, hoping they would have the same dramatic response the Colocasia had. They didn’t seem to do anything, though.
When I picked up the pot to take to my friend, it had a new leaf and it was vibrant. The other 3 were still just green. I told her how it had behaved so that she could know what to expect. And she suggested that the planted needed the light to produce pink leaves rather than to change the green to pink. And, looking at the new growth on my large plant, that seems to be the case.
So, all color change in non-green leaves is not the same.
This is my flame calla lily. I moved it from the back yard to next to the front stoop 2 years ago. I think it isn’t getting as much light and that’s affecting its color change. When it was in the back, the colors were a little more vibrant and the change was, in my opinion, more dramatic. It’s still gorgeous and probably my favorite of all the flowers in my yard.
Anyway, I decided to show you its progression this year.
Chuck and I saw this piece at an Exhibition at the Weatherspoon at UNC-G in February. It’s an interactive piece that offers the viewer to participate by removing a page. We each took a piece. He folded his to carry it out to the car. I did not. I wasn’t sure what I would do with it and taped it over a a framed poster in my bedroom.
My friend, Caitlyn, has had the habit of folding paper cranes for as long as I’ve known her (around 18 years). Anytime she is somewhere that there are bits of paper lying around, she folds cranes. She said it started when she read that if you fold 1,000 cranes, a wish will come true. She figures she should have gotten more than one by now. But, she lost count ages ago.
(Last night, we went out for dinner and she was making tiny ones with the chopstick wrappers on the table without even looking at her hands.)
A couple of months ago, I asked her if she would take my sheet and fold me a crane. I had to cut the edges down before I delivered it, because it needed to be square instead of rectangular.
She learned something by using this bicolored sheet that wasn’t obvious otherwise. Theres a point in the folding where you have 4 triangles that become the actual bird. No matter which way she folded it, there were always 3 and one. It was always going to be colored diagonally. Never tail/head and the wings. Always each wing a different color. She could only choose which color she wanted to be the head and which the tail,
Remember that I told you I want to try to bonsai a swamp cypress so that it makes knees?
Last Fall I asked my BIL (who lives in Mt. Pleasant, SC) if he would pick one up for me. I meant buy one in a pot. That lovely man went out in the woods and dug me the only one he could find that still had leaves on it so that he could be sure what it was. It’s really small and since that last leaf had dropped off, he was a little concerned that it might actually be dead. But, it was not. It is, however quite small, which also means not hard for him to dig up for me.
I have mostly been keeping it in the water garden to encourage that knee growth and a LOT of wild grass came up in the native soil that it has been living in. Today, I got the grass out and resituated the pot.
The irises haven’t been particularly happy about being pulled up and transplanted. But, I believe they’ll be fine. The cypress is an almost invisible stick to the left of the elephant ear.
My MG friend, Terry, had offered me a pink-and-white camellia. She has them growing abundantly from seeds dropped under her very large bush. I was happy to take one, so she brought me 4. They were bare-root when she got them to me and I’ve had them in a bucket of water until today. Now, 2 are in separate pots to take to my cousin and 2 are in a single pot to get healthy before I plant them at the western tip of the shade garden, at the left corner of the house.
Here’s the picture Terry sent me of her bush. I’m probably decades from this profusion.The cypress
One of my MG mentors roadtripped to Texas with her husband to visit his family. She sent us pictures of flowers almost every day of her trip and she brought us all a package of blue bonnet seeds (L. texensis). I cleaned up the zinnia stalks what were leftover around the well from last year and planted blue bonnets.
They are native to TX. But, it looks like they’ll just be annuals here. And I might have done better to wait to plant them in the Fall to have flowers next year. We’ll see how it goes.
Did I tell you about my grapes? I don’ t think I did. My friend, Ann, thought she ordered 2 seedless white grape vines. She ordered 2 pairs and they came bare root.
She gave me a pair.
I have put one by the south fence and one on the northside west fence. I have a Task on my calendar to water them every 3 days. Today’s the day. I’ve been filling a bucket and pouring it slowly into the ground where they’re planted. And I have leaves!
This may be another “takes decades.” But, time’s going to pass whether I have something growing or not.
I went out to take pictures to show them to you and it looks like Southside Johnny is already trying to produce a cluster of grapes. *boggle!*
A couple of other nice things I saw while I was out: it looks like one of the caladiums that I put in a pot after overwintering in a bag inside is sprouting, one of the gloriousa vines appears to be sprouting and one of the bleeding hearts has started poking some leaves out.
I’m gross and sweaty and I need more water and a shower. I’m going to finish the water I have and this bowl of kettle corn before going out to turn of the hose that’s watering the shade garden first.
I am the Audience 