Bloom Day January 2010...

Quite honestly, the only plants that are truly blooming are my beloved, cheerful Johnnies. Maybe that is cheating because if not tricked into blooming in the fall, they wouldn’t bloom until the spring.



But I am so thankful to have them. And they don’t seem to complain about being persuaded to flower throughout the winter for me.




The African violet my sister-in-law brought me at Thanksgiving is still blooming, so I think it is probably o.k. for me to take credit for keeping it going. Although, now that I have said that, it will probably stop blooming and then die.

{Saintpaulia}

I am starting to see leaf buds on many of my plants which gives me hope that spring actually will come this year. But there aren’t many flower buds yet. My camellia is one of the ones with flower buds.

{Camellia - I don't know the rest; I've lost the plant tag.}

The buds on this daphne will soon open to their fragrant white blooms.

{Daphne odora 'Alba'}

And you can already see the pink forming on this daphne.

{Daphne odora}

My Purple Rain pansies look a bit bedraggled, but they continue to struggle on. I guess winter is taking its toll on them as it is on me.

{Viola x wittrockiana 'Purple Rain'}

It finally warmed up enough that I was able to look into my greenhouse without fear of heat escaping and I was absolutely thrilled to find that everything is doing well. It was such a relief to know that my plants stayed warm enough not to be damaged while it was so cold outside. And I found a tiny pink bud!

{Erodium reichardii 'Charm'}

One of my pitcher plants has a bud on it. I think that is the bud I am most excited about right now.

{Sarracenia flava}

But my Johnnies continue to be my favorites as they unabashedly cheer me on through winter.


Have a beautiful day!

Cold plants...

The fields and flowers have frost on them this morning. I think the frost makes things look amazing - the way it edges and highlights the leaves, the designs it makes in water, how it changes the colors of the greens.

My Purple Rain pansies are a little different this morning.



Frosted weeds. (You have no weeds in your garden, right?)


Icy clump of bluegrass.


Chilly Nemesia on the wall.


Dianthus with fall leaves. So cool! (Pardon the pun.)


Have a beautiful day!

Purple rain...

For the fall, winter, and spring, I planted this urn with Purple Rain pansies (Viola x wittrockiana) that I purchased from my favorite local nursery, New Garden Nursery. They are supposed to grow so that they will cascade over the edges of the pot, which I think will be quite charming. I have planted grape hyacinth (Muscari, probably armeniacum) with them because I like the contrast of its leaves. And then, of course, in the spring, there will be the beautiful, fragrant blue flowers to enjoy with the purple and yellow pansies.





I bought the urn at a big box store a couple of years ago. It is made of that strange, sorta foamy stuff and was scraped and scratched in places. So, I mixed some paint to be close to the color of the pot and painted the areas that were wearing out and then coated that with polyurethane once the paint had dried.




It all looks so beautiful on top of my "stone" wall, next to the house. It makes part of an ending point for the intersection of the path and the steps that come from the deck and back door.



Have a beautiful day!