Joys of gardening - late fall edition

It's late October here in Lincolnland, and lots of trees are still green because this has been a late fall. The low temps have only flirted with a frost, and petunias in the window boxes are still flowering. TPP thought that he had finally triumphed by catching a wary groundhog that had been living under the garden pavilion all summer (the second one). Fencing had been installed around the base of the pavilion, except in one area, which was exploited, and a second small breach.  After the relocation of the groundhog, the fencing was fixed and completed to prevent or minimize future colonization. However much to his dismay, there is now new evidence of another egress! Groundhog number 3?  This was not pleasing news, and to add insult to injury, TPP got a few new chigger bites.  Never had them remain this late in the season before, which promises more good things to come from climate change. Hope some rain last night and today is enough to ameliorate the mild October drought.  Farmers have really loved the dry weather and most of the maize and soybean fields are harvested; good yields should yield lower prices emphasizing the you-can't-win nature of modern farming. Finally decided to start bringing the tropical plants (orchids, cacti, bromeliads, gesneriads, a croton, the bonsai trees, etc.) inside.  Everything appears to have done well this year.

Friday Fabulous Flower - Queen's tears

The Queen's tears is a commonly and easily grown bromelliad.  TPP's sits happily in a hanging basket outside for the summer until things get frosty. Then it comes inside, and almost without fail it flowers in January.  The flowers don't last long but it is still such a winter time joy.  TPP has featured this plant before (Billbergia nutans) because it has such an odd combination of colors, pink bracts, flowering stalk, and calyx, green ovary and green petals edged in blue, and the yellow anthers.  Several such inflorescences  ring the basket and the whold thing is quite lovely, so do forgive the redundancy; it's just nice to see every year.

Holiday flowering

It's been a good holiday season for flowering. As a consequence of spending summers and early fall outside, almost all of our tropical houseplants regularly flower. This was a particularly good year because so many plants came into flower at one time, but some were sort of over whelmed by the holiday decorations. Nonetheless several visitors did notice and appreciate several of them. So here's the list: forced paper white narcissas, the queen's tears (a bromeliad), a mistletoe cactus, the big blue bromeliad, an azalea (which itself gets decorated), an Aeschynanthus (a gesner), an orchid (an unknown hybrid). On the whole a pretty cheerful display. Although all have their charm, the queen's tears is a favorite because of the unusual combination of colors, which is good because otherwise the plant is not particularly attractive. Most of these have been featured in this blog before, thus the links.