Good morning, and blame it on the garden bloggers! Welcome to Saturday Morning Garden Blogging.
Super Tuesday was a miserable day here in Denver. It started snowing Monday afternoon and temperatures went into the cellar, with single-digit lows. Tuesday morning rush hour was a bloody mess, as it had snowed longer than anticipated and, while there were only 3" or so of snow, there was a good layer of ice on the roads. The 3-block walk to our caucus site was over ice and snow covered sidewalks — I suspect many older folks were kept away by the foul weather and lack of available parking.
But, looking ahead, I believe we have turned a corner, and I don't mean politically. It's mid-February, and the long-range forecast shows lows staying in the 20s and 30s, and highs in the 40s and 50s. We're starting to turn the corner into spring.
In preparation for the planting season, on Wednesday I went to a nursery near Younger Son's school to buy some seed-starting mix, and some rooting hormone so I can get some cuttings off a houseplant. What should have been a $20 stop turned into something else.
And it's all your fault.
Instead of just buying a bag of seed starting mix and a bottle of rooting hormone, I was enticed... nay, pulled... nay, forced to browse among the orchids. The many, many orchids, with their bountiful shapes and colors and smells.
They were so pretty! And I needed something to take pictures of for garden blogging: so many of you have posted such beautiful photos of orchids.
I tell you, it was a wild fight going on in my head. I've been tempted by orchids before, but managed to keep them out of my shopping cart, reminding myself that I'm really not all that good at tending to houseplants, and that orchids are too fussy. I'd manage to resist the temptation by not looking too closely, and keeping my nose far away from the blossoms.
This time, me and my nose got too close.
And some of them smelled so awesome.
Of course, in my arsenal of reasons why not was Zasu Pitts Pootie. Zasu is still so very young, and so very exploratory, and, well, she likes to bat at and bite anything new that crosses her range. And those orchids with their long tendrils of bobbing blossoms would prove just too tempting for her. I really didn't want to provide Zasu with a $50, living cat toy.
But the orchids had a response: the fragrant denobrium, more like a little compact bush. And it would fit on the windowsill, and love the eastern exposure of the kitchen addition.
So I justified that one. And put it into my cart.
Then... then... as I was approaching the check stand, there was a display of orchids that were past their blooming prime — and deeply discounted. And one of them was a phalaenopsis, whose nodding large, purple blossoms I had admired, but rejected, because of the Zasu factor. But instead of being $50, it was only $15!
I tell you, I had a hard time getting that thing home: the wind played hell on getting the two-foot stem into the house intact. But I managed.
So, since it's all your fault that I now have orchids in my house, you'll have to help me keep them alive and, maybe, perhaps, even get them to bloom again next year.
That's what's happening here. What's going on in your gardens?