Chase those winter blues shoes!

Ladies, Depressed?  Cold?  Got those mid-winter blues?  Planning a sunny cruise or tropical get away?  Well, if TPP is any judge, here's some garden sandals that will chase away any winter blues and put a smile on your face.  Normally TPP would buy a pair of these for Mrs. Phactor without hesitation except for the factor of 10 rule, which is when splurging on such a gift, the complementary sun dress, jewelry, and hand bag will end up costing him at least 10 times more than the original gift.  Oh, yes, he has data!  At any rate, these sandals by Mohop, an ecofriendly company (kickstart campaign here), are just purely cheerful.  Sorry guys.

Avoiding SAD - Visit a Greenhouse

Seasonal Affective Disorder, the winter blues, has never gotten me down, although winter simply goes on too long. But one certain remedy is to spend some time in the nearest greenhouse. All that organic material, the humidity, the smells of plants and earth, have a very salutory effect upon your brain. Maybe this is why botanists are not too prone to depression?

So while curing my SAD today this beauty caught my attention - Thunbergia mysorensis. Sorry if it has a common name, it isn't known to me (anyone?). The inflorescences hang down nearly 2 feet and the colorful flowers open bottom (which is at the top) to top, but this poses a problem for such flowers because usually their stamens and stigma are on the dorsal side of the flower. This is solved by having the flowers rotate on their stalks 180 degrees. This is not uncommon and other plants with dangly inflorescences do the same thing (e.g. Wisteria). Note also how the red calyx contributes to the overall display. You can grow this outside in warm climates.