Scratch 'N' Sniff Edition

Oh if only there were eSmells! My garden is not an abundant one, but it has some nice old friends in it that are thriving now. The most spectacular is my jasmine vine which is packed with more blossoms this year than I've ever seen. The smell wafts around the yard and in through the back doors upstairs and downstairs. My resident hummingbirds love to sip from the jasmine, although it seems like a lot of work to eat from so many little blossoms. I also have a star jasmine which is getting ready to bloom.

I also have a nice honeysuckle around the side yard, and sweet peas on the back porch. Ahhh, summer!It occured to me the other day that my night blooming cereus should be blooming this year just about the time The Bean is born!

Photo Roundup

I've just emptied my camera, and decided to share some photos with you.

JoJo lounges.












JoJo looks imperious.















Bijou and JoJo glare at each other across the no-man's-land of the carpet in Fringe Wars. They both love to nap on the fringe of the rug, and they've each staked out an end. No one ever sleeps on the other's fringe.









JoJo inspects her new Vacation Villa. It has turned out to be not much of a hit.



















Finally, my Indian Rope plant has continued blooming now that I've brought inside. The waxy pink flowers are lovely and smell like chocolate. Mmmm!

End of Summer

It's a beautiful day, but summer is definitely winding up. We've had some cold nights and are snugging up with more blankets these days. I discovered our comforter is mysteriously deflated, probably by dry cleaning last spring. They're $139 at Costco, so I think maybe we'll just pile on blankets this year.

JoJo's veggie garden is mostly gone. I gave her the bolted lettuce to eat which she liked. Fresh lettuce on a stick! Two more carrots await pulling and eating.

Meanwhile, we're outside enjoying the warmth and sunshine as long as we can! You can see JoJo's wonderful bolt hole in the right corner above the clematis. It "mysteriously" gets filled in occasionally so she gets to work off some fat digging it out. She needs to do some serious digging soon ...

Cereus Film

I finally put together a little film of my 2008 cereus blooming. I didn't make it as pretty as last year's. This year I experimented with taking long films of the blooming, now that I have my snazzy new still camera that will also do unlimited films. I then doubled their speed 6 times, so 2 to the 6 or 64 times. For the last night of blooming when I actually had a bloom facing the camera, I reverted to many stills. I think I actually prefer the progression of stills since the quality of the picture is better. All the flower shots are now up on my Flickr account, and here's the video.

Alien Pod Hatching

There has been some serious Cereus action in my house! I had always heard that all the blooms happened on the same night. This year is the first time I've had more than one bud, and they seem to be disobeying orders. One flower bloomed Monday night, but the others stayed shut. This was good because I had to work 'til 9pm Monday night and I didn't get home until after 9:30.

Tuesday night I still had four unopened buds, and once again I had to work until 9pm. Luckily, I wasn't scheduled to be on the desk for the last hour, so I was able to go home one hour early! Thanks, Alene! I set up a light before I went to work, and Michael had started the video on my camera at 7:00 when he left for Kung Fu. I got home at 8:30 just in time to change the battery on the camera and see most of the blooming. I took a bunch of stills and a couple hours of video. I hope to take the video and do some time lapse fiddling. I'll post that sometime this week.

One bud still hasn't opened, and I'm pretty sure it will bloom tonight. The plant is right next to a big window, and the blooms face the glass making them hard to film. The plant is too huge to turn around entirely. I'm going to try to twist the last one around to get some full-frontal-bloomity.

Meanwhile, I've uploaded my photos to a Flickr set.

Tonight's the Night!

Tonight's the night the cereus bloom! At least I'm pretty sure it will be tonight or tomorrow. Unfortunately, I work 'til 9pm tonight and tomorrow. Big wah. I set up the camera, and Michael will get some shots and footage. Last year it got to its most open at around 9:45, so I won't totally miss it, just all the opening action. I discovered another bud, too! I'll have 5 blooms!

This week has been quite hot, although today finally cooled off with some rain. Bijou has decided her new favorite place to cool off is in JoJo's carrot garden. Michael said it's because it's a "bed of carrots." The poor carrots are getting pretty squished, so I started pulling them for JoJo to eat. They're delicious!

Floral excitement!

Last year, my Night Blooming Cereus bloomed for the first time in 6 years. I got one flower last year, and one flower 6 years before. This year, I left the cactus in the nice sunny window it had enjoyed so much, and I fertilized it with specialized cactus fertilizer. It's paid off! I have FOUR alien-pod-like buds! I'm very excited. I have a better camera this year, so I'm hoping I have enough memory to shoot the whole blooming thing on film, rather than just paste together stills like I did last year.

Last year it bloomed on August 17th, and it will probably be at around the same time. Stay tuned!

Signs of Spring

Not much has been happening in life lately, so I really haven't had anything to post about. But SPRING is coming, and that's got me excited. One of the reasons I love living in Seattle is that the signs of Spring start so early.

My blue stars and some protected daffodils have been blooming for weeks. Snowdrops are just showing themselves, and many bulbs have been poking themselves through the soil.

This morning the resident flicker started hammering on our metal chimney like he does every year. For the next month or so we'll be awakened by his jack hammering every morning.

The Bewick's wrens have been inspecting their old nest box. Last year there was a bit of contention between the chickadees and the wrens for the nest box, so this year I added an extra one. It's in a very sheltered spot and kind of hidden, so I've hung some suet there to attract birds to the area.

I ordered a small video camera to put in the original nest box. I'm pretty excited! It's not wireless, though, so I've got to figure out how to get the input all the way into my computer. I might need a wireless transmitter/receiver adapter, if it's not too expensive. The camera was a deal at $60 from Cooper Seeds.

We've had a long cold winter of pretty consistent gray days and temps staying in the upper 30s and lower 40s. Nothing terrible, but I'm looking forward to some warm sunshine.

Amarilli Mia Bella

Cereusly Excited!

I'm very excited! My Night-blooming Cereus bloomed!

I've had this plant for 10 years, and this is only the second time it has bloomed. The first time was six years ago, so it's been a long wait. Each time I only got one bloom. The plant itself is a rather squid-like cactus that is tethered to a curtain rod to keep its tentacles and suckers away from our TV. The flower is beautiful, though, and the scent was heavenly. Kind of like plumeria.

I've become a Cereus filmmaker, and I tacked together all of my photos to create a simulated time-lapse of the flower blooming, taken from several points of view.


I also grew this fantastic bunny carrot! Eyes added, nature did the rest. After I took the photo, Jo Jo ate the carrot. That was its destiny.

An Iced Bun and Pretty Flowers

When I say "iced bun", you may think of this:

but you'd be wrong. It's starting to get hot in Seattle, and since rabbits don't cool down well on their own, we ice our bun. As you can see, Jo-Jo loves it.

Our other girl, Bijou, stays cool in the shade in the backyard.

















Meanwhile, my garden is loving the sunshine and is blooming! Amaryllis, peonies, jasmine, delphiniums, and dianthus.