Intimate Landscapes – December 2015

This is the third month for my Intimate Landscapes series (after reading Eliot Porter’s Intimate Landscapes book (available online here)) featuring images from December that are: smaller scale but not macro, multiple species, and artsy.

This first image is from Hawaii – the very dense and green ground cover…with a few reds and a very black leaf that caught my attention.

The camellia that was surrounded by ferns in Hawaii was an arrangement made my nature.

Sometimes there were intimate landscapes in Hawaii that looked similar to ones seen in more temperate climates…but there is black lava underneath this grouping!

Longwood Gardens paired white, green and red plants in their main conservatory.

There was a large tiered fountain that had been repurposed for succulents.

There large bowl with a variety of cactus…one of them with tiny blooms.

Groupings of different pines made with their cones were also part of the natural decorations. None of these ‘intimate landscapes’ in the conservatory would have been together without the help of the gardeners…but I enjoyed them the same way I enjoy finding groupings outdoors.

Last but not least – from outdoors at Longwood Gardens – ferns, moss, and dried leaves growing around the knotted roots of a beech tree.

Gleanings of the Week Ending October 17, 2015

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

One-Third of Cactus Species Threatened – The main dangers to cacti are illegal trade for horticulture and private collections. I was surprised that development in areas where they grow was not high on the list of dangers too.

How to tangle on glass Christmas ornaments – Wow! This is a project I want to try. I’ve already started practicing by tangling on soft drink bottles. It takes some new skills to work on a rounded surface!

Take Free Online Classes, Get Course Credit at MIT – The experiment is a one year program in supply chain management. The first half is online (and free); the second semester is on campus.

What Those Frost Patterns on Your Car Window Have to Do with Ice in Space – The patterns are like abstract art – I prefer to use the defroster rather than the scrapper…watch them melt slowly.

DuPont Predicts CRISPR Plants on Dinner Plates in Five Years –Improving crops by rapidly introducing beneficial gene variants found in other varieties of the same species.

Microsoft’s Very Good Day – Microsoft has a whole new vibe….that became a lot more apparent in early October.

Postcard from Cape Monarch – It would be wonderful to see this many Monarchs on goldenrod here in Maryland. We have seen the butterflies this past summer – but not in the numbers we observed before the mid-1990s.

Dying at home leads to more peace, less grief, but requires wider support -

9 Germ Fighting Facts – Well timed for the beginning of the cold and flu season!

Not your average peacock – Peacock images collect by National Geographic editors

Tucson Botanical Garden - January 2015

I’ve already posted about the butterflies and poison dart frogs at the Tucson Botanical Garden. Today the post is mostly about cactus! I am always fascinated by how alien cactus sometimes looks. Their flowers look like they don’t belong nestled in thorns or atop smooth surfaced succulents. And what about the ones that look hairy? Sometimes the thorns are unusual colors - or several different colors. Sometimes the ribs stand out - sometimes the plant looks like a cushion - or a long stem that flops over. One non-cactus in the slide show below is the very last image. Can your guess what it is?

A pomegranate! The tree had several dried fruits on it. Another non-cactus was a net-leaf hackberry. I know this one only because there was a sign. The leaves were gone but I was fascinated by the bark.

Zooming - January 2015

The zoomed images this month are more varied than usual. There were some images from very cold days (mostly in Maryland) and some mild days in Arizona. I’ll be posting about our travel to Arizona in the weeks to come but I could not resist including a little prelude here! Can you find…. 

• Ice eddies
• A rabbit
• Elk eye
• Snowman
• Crow feet
• Star Trek Enterprise pictograph
• Petrified wood knots
• Red thorns
• Baby toe cactus

US Botanic Garden in December 2014 - Part II

We made our annual holiday trek down to the US Botanic Garden in Washington DC on the last Sunday of the year. I posted about the holiday display earlier here. This post is about the best of the rest.

It was too cold to enjoy sitting around outside the building but I did appreciate the artistry of the butterfly benches as we walked toward the building. As we were standing in line for the model lighthouse/train exhibit, I noticed the faces above the windows: serene and grotesque.

I also noticed the cornerstone for the building; the building was built in the year my parents were born!

Inside we enjoyed the steamy warmth of tropical rooms. The orchids are always beautiful…and fragrant.

I’ve started looking for cycads in every conservatory I visit and noticed three in the US Botanic Garden. They all looked very robust. Maybe sometimes we mistake them for palms…but not for long. A closer looks and it is obvious they are very different plants/trees.

We wander out of the steamy warmth to the dry room….and cactus. I love the patterns of these plants: the vertical  line of dots on the rib (1), the center ‘Spirograph’ pattern (2), the thorns spiking from the accordion pleats (3), the muted pink at the tips fading into the green at the base (4), and the grouping of small and slightly larger cushions in a snug crack (5).