Winter Beauty?

The light is different. There's always"the" day around this time of year that suddenly looks a little brighter, even if it's cold with a thick cloud cover - the sun is a little higher, the shadows (when you can see any) are a little more defined - it's hard to describe, but the FEEL is different! And yes, our days are already 50 minutes longer than they were a month ago, too - and while it's not real noticeable yet, if we do have an rare evening without clouds, it makes quite an impact on us!

i'm trying...i really am. The sun was out yesterday, and the Porcupine grass was catching some of the late afternoon rays, so i was moved enough to take a few photos. Looks nice enough, you can't tell it's only 15 degreesF, can you?

Even a little blue sky can help this time of year, it brings out what little colors there are in the dead of winter.

Looking out into the Florida room (the name of which makes me laugh THIS time of year - it's not usually heated, so it sure doesn't FEEL like Florida!). i can almost fool myself into thinking it's a warmer time of the year, but i can't keep out of the back of my mind that any of these pictures would look 100% better if they were taken in June! 

All in all, it's my favorite day of January - The LAST one!

My Affair...

i never thought it would happen when i married, but it has- a new love has come between us...

Actually, this has been going on for some time now. This interloper i have been spending my time with is always there for me, is good - looking, is extremely fascinating, can answer almost any question i have about anything, and is a wonderful muse to my creativity.

It even checks my spelling!

Yes, i love my P.C.and all the new technology, but DH does not! i did, at the beginning, manage to get him to play a couple of games with me, but that faded quickly (plus i'm not really into the games myself that much). i acquired my first P.C. only about ten years ago, and THAT was after a couple of years of wheedling, arguing, and explaining to him why we should get a computer! Of course, at that time, it was well over $1000 to get even a very basic desktop (only kind there was).

Remember these?

i still remember when i set my first PC up and turned it on (OMG, i think it had a whole 1 GB hard drive!!- now what are we talking about- terabytes?!). i actually acquired it handed down from my SIL, who had bought it second hand from her boss! i already had, like everyone else did in this country, an AOL free trial CD (the first software i ever loaded), and when it was done, i heard a "ding!" and that now ubiquitous "You've got mail!" i swear i almost cried! FINALLY! i had arrived into the age of technology!
Spent the next few months sitting in the computer room late into the night, cruising the Web, printing out greeting cards (in black & white- didn't have a COLOR printer!), creating Word documents (the full version actually came already loaded into P.C.s back then, too - sometimes!), and emailing the very few people i knew who HAD an email. i had fallen in love! It was very much like that with me, and i can bet some of you can relate to that, too- the amazement, the wonder, the urge to find out everything you can discover about this crazy new thing in your life.

To this day, Hubby does not understand why I'm so involved and want to spend so much time with this creature.

 

Here's my newest baby-my netbook!

So i showed hubby some of the wonderful things i could now do (like THIS blog), and he said, "That's nice - but does it do anything important?" Sigh.... Left brained are from Venus; right brained are from Mars...

Three Mile Island Amaryllis

My office is connected to a bank building, the same bank i worked at for twenty years (1985-2005), so i'm wandering over there/thru there daily - i just tell everyone i'm an alumni! Still know almost everyone there, and i'm familiar with the whole area, including the security guards. One of them works the day shift, and is a buddy of mine. Since he likes to garden, too, we talk plants a lot.

Another friend of his in the building gives him a cool plant for Xmas every year, this year it was this Amaryllis trio of bulbs in a shallow dish full of river rock. Well, i know how Amaryllis grows, it sends up a flower stalk before the leaves appear, and has 4 blooms that last quite some time, after which the leaves come up and help build up the bulb's strength for the next year's blooms. If you're REAL lucky,one bulb may have TWO flower stalks.

Anyway, he placed this tray at the guard station (note the "Please check in with Security" sign in the pic), and the bulbs started to shoot up their flower stalks. All 3 were sort of short, as i remember Amaryllis, but the flowers were nice and large. But, i could see secondary flower stalks appearing on all 3 bulbs, so i thought that was gonna be nice.

Strangely, though, a THIRD flower stalk started to appear on all 3 bulbs! I had never seen THAT before! Each succeeding stalk would grow a few inches taller than the previous one, and my friend finally had to design a support for it (and talked the building's maintenance men into fabricating it!)

At the present time, there are now so many stalks and leaves that we can't be sure, but there may be more flower stalks coming!

I guess that the person who gave him these also bought one for herself, and hers only had one flower stalk apiece! So where THESE bulbs came from is a mystery, but a very interesting one!

What A Difference A Sunbeam Makes

This morning it was one of those days a gardener really hates- everything was in black and white. The ground was white, the sky was dark grey, any manmade objects (vehicles, houses, fences) were either

snow covered or grey because of the coating of road salt and mud on them, the evergreens were so dark they looked black, the only color in the landscape was a little brown in the ornamental grasses. And my red Xmas ribbons on our fence - (that's why i don't take them down right away)!

Then the sun came out..... The blue sky broke thru the cloud cover, the grasses turned gold, the red bows lit up, and the snow sparkled! How strange that one tiny difference could create such a radical transformation! All of a sudden i was ready to get dressed and begin my day, when i was ready to crawl back into bed 30 minutes earlier.

That's how it goes around here in January - though i am grateful that my office at work has windows, because i know i have SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder), and it makes a tremendous difference in how i feel in the "dark" months. ( Those of you in Alaska are probably laughing - i REALLY couldn't handle your winter nights!)

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Life And Death In The Garden

i think something (somebody) fell into my pond yesterday. We have a pond de icer to keep a hole open in the ice in winter - i had it turned off, but had a very thin layer if ice a foot around it because it was turned on the day before. Came home from work, it had snowed and there was a light layer of snow laying on the thin ice. Curiously, though, there was a small hole in the ice, nowhere near the heater, and the snow layer around it was dark, like it had gotten wet. Although it was quite subtle, i had never seen anything resembling that before, and i'm really concerned that a bunny or squirrel had fallen through! Damn! i really hate animals dying in my yard, especially if it's kind of my fault! Plus, most of the rest of the pond has a thick, snow covered layer of ice on it- i'm never gonna be able to find anything if something DID fall in - so a dead body in there certainly will be dangerous for the fish when it decomposes. i could be wrong, though, and will have to keep my fingers crossed that nothing really happened.

These pics are a few weeks old - before the snow fell!

A couple of years ago, we were having trouble with raccoons spending too much time around the pond, and i set up little mousetraps here and there to discourage their new hobby. I had also put out little birdhouses in our trees in the Spring, so a few baby Wrens had just hatched nearby, and i 'd enjoy watching both parents feeding them. All was well for a while, then one day, i found one of the adult Wrens dead  in one of the traps! It's leg had been caught... i was very upset }:(  

Not knowledgeable enough to tell male from female, i of course assumed that it was Mom, which made me feel even worse! I got rid of the traps.

And yes, i find a fledgling bird in the water on occasion - although i never seem to find it before it's too late! Now, my cat Skeeter sometimes catches a Mole in the yard and, being a normally indoor cat, will not eat it, but will play with it to death. That's the one case in which Mom (me) turns the other cheek and lets Skeeter have her fun-saves my yard from being destroyed! (Although i still feel bad....)

Happy (365 and counting) Holidays!

i had so much fun with Christmas and New Years that i wondered if there were more holidays around than what i knew about. So, with help from the all knowing, all present World Wide Web, i discovered that there are holidays around for just about every day of the year! Like, we missed "Happy Mew Year For Cats Day", which was yesterday, and "National Chocolate Covered Cherry Day", which was Jan. 3rd. i have decided to Tweet about one a day for however long it keeps my interest! So check out my NanciTweets in the sidebar and find out how many you'd like to celebrate!