I love that I grew 2 trees from especially tasty seeds and that we (some years when April freezes don’t wipe them out) get fruit from them.
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This is the newest addition to the art in our house.
Chuck was invited by a friend to see the work of a local artist. (I was still drinking my morning coffee when he hustled out the door.)
He texted me a couple of pictures while he was there. I was especially tickled when he brought this one home because it was my favorite.
Chris had not given it a title. I have called it Frank because I see Frank the Rabbit from Donny Darko in there. I also see Betty Boop. and some pitcher plants. But, mostly, Frank.
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I think what we do when we get up is probably the most ritualized part of our days. It is for me, anyway. I straighten the bed, brush my teeth (there may or may not be hair brushing), get a kiss, have a cup of black dark roast coffee and hop online where I upen a folder labeled Morning.
The Morning folder has a collection of webcomics, Patreon, BlueSky, Reddit and the WordPress Reader. When I have read through all that, I do some word games and Sudoku.
Recently, I added Public Domain Image Archive to the collection. I’ve forgotten how I found it. But, it’s a kick. I pick a picture at random and read through. Sometimes, I only get one picture. Like today.
My choice this morning clicked through to a single image of a painted butterfly with photographic busts of 4 men in the tips of its wings. The Art Institute of Chicago has a leatherbound volume of Madame B’s collages. But, the only additional link goes to a page of their collage collection (many of which are hers). There’s no information about Madame B herself.
A couple of weeks ago, I learned about The Snowflake Man of Vermont.
And recently, I found a colorized photo of a lily.
That link got me a short article about the photographer. Ogawa Kazumasa worked in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when the way to have color pictures was to add it in during development. You can tell that in some of the pictures with finer detail.
I was intrigued enough to buy a copy of his book of flowers that had been published by the Getty. I really enjoyed having a closer look and have since passed that along to a friend who was equally delighted with it.
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A few years ago, I read that if Holiday cacti get cold, it makes the flowers pink. (Someone had asked about her white ones getting a pink tinge.)
It looks like my yellow Thanksgiving cactus got chilly when I had it by the kitchen windows.
It’s supposed to look like this.
Hm. Maybe my pictures are flawed. What’s blooming now looks almost orange to me.
I may have shown this to you before. But, I’m doing it again.
I was briefly in a FaceBook group for fans of Schlumbergeri. I left because the Serious People got all in a twist if you called one wrong. We tend to call them Holiday cactus because they bloom whenever they feel like it and may be Valentine’s or Halloween cactus if the light gets right.
But, that group was what inspired me to want this yellow one. And it showed me how to tell them apart to name them correctly if you care.
Mine are all Thanksgiving except for one Easter that was a gift. Another plant addict gave me a pinch of hers saying it hadn’t bloomed for her yet, so she had no idea what color it would be.
It hasn’t bloomed for me, yet, either. And I’ve begun to threaten it with annihilation.
That has frequently been effective with recalcitrant bloomers.
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You can find more and better by doing an internet search.
Instead, today you get a couple of my favorites from Biltmore House.
If I was a guest of the Vanderbilts, I would have wanted a chair there.
Took this on the way to the shuttle back to the car.
I am the Audience 