This is what Venus Fly Trap flowers look like.
It bloomed in June last year.
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This is the bog garden I got at Swan Lake Gardens in Sumter, SC Memorial Day weekend in 2022. In this picture, it has 3 different pitcher plants and a Venus Fly Trap.
As the plants have grown and spread, I’ve broken it up a little. I took the parrot pitchers (Sarracenia psittacina) out, split them up and gave pieces to a couple of my nephews. The pot I moved them to is in a lifted place in the water garden. I put the VFT in another pot on the same table with the remaining Sarracenia purpureas.
The parrots are the fat ones in the back. They were really crowding everyone else. And, even after taking them out, the other Sarracenias were overwhelming the VFTs. Since they’re all dormant right now, I’ll show you the new arrangement when it gets warm and they come back.
In the mean time, this is the parrot pitcher when it got its new pot.
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My friend, Luke, who is @LessEthereal most places online, is a huge fan of micropoetry. In particular, haiku and haiga. He pointed me to a website that’s doing a haiku-a-day thing for February. (Shortest month for the shortest poetry. Ha!)
They have a page about what haiku actually is and it’s not what American schools teach. They are more interested in what is said than in the number of syllables. And the differences between the languages makes that ridiculous anyway.
Taken from the “Not 5-7-5” article on that website: “Specifically, a haiku tries to invoke the time of year with a word that is typical of that season, such as snow for winter, or frog for spring.” And…” traditional haiku include words that function like a spoken sort of punctuation. More importantly, they cut the poem into two parts, creating a sort of juxtaposition, not only grammatically but also imagistically. The point is to carefully pair two images together in such a way that a shift or disjunction occurs between them. The art of haiku lies in creating the right amount of distance between the two parts, so the leap is neither too far (and thus obscure) or too close (and thus too obvious).”
I have a new 1.5mm italic fountain pen that I can only use at home because I have to use ballpoint at work. And I have an empty journal that was lying around the house.
I’m trying to write one thing a day that can lead me into writing sophisticated haiku. If I ever write one that I think ticks all the boxes, I’ll share.
Editing on 5/5/25 to add another site I want to remember: https://owlcation.com/humanities/True-Haiku-Myth-5-7-5-how-to-write-haiku
“The aim is to create a clear thought or image in as few words as possible while preserving the meaning and the rhythm you desire. “
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Peace lilies have very strange flowers. The actual flower is the yellow in the middle. The white is a spathe, which is a fancy leaf. And they pull out of the stem of a leaf, backwards.
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This is another gift from a coworker. She offered me irises from her grandmother’s yard and I was glad to take them. She brought them in 2 clumps telling me she had no idea what colors they would be. But, she had gotten them from different parts of the yard.
I have a patch of purple ones on the driveway side of the flowerbed in front of the house. This was on the opposite side until I decided it needed thinning and put a bunch out in the bed by the street.
This single purple one blooms every other year in that patch of yellow. Because of that, I have decided that each rhizome blooms every other year. I could be wrong. But, it’s what I think.
I am the Audience 