I continue with the drought/rain/rain gauge analogy with regards to my dating relationship side of my life.
After that post about the drought ending, I did indeed change my hairstyle slightly (just how I style it as I mentioned in the comments). I have also decided to take the plunge to dye out some of the grey in it this coming Tuesday (Nov 1st!). I’ve always been against using chemicals on my hair, because of the concerns about endocrine disruption. BUT I’m tired of all of the grey. I’m probably 25% grey (maybe 15%?) – it is hard to tell, because some spots are more along the 80% side and others are in the 10% side.
I’ve also decided that as long as I’m getting rid of the grey, I might as well add some highlights! I’m feeling rather edgy these days, and I want my hair to reflect my new mood!
In other news, the flirtation that went nowhere is starting to go somewhere. Somewhere intriguing! My rain gauge has some rain in it!
The back-story is that this is a guy I know at church, and I’ve been attracted to him since I met him over a year ago. He is super-committed to the church, has a deep faith, and is really outgoing and funny. However, a few weeks after I met him, I saw him sit with a woman at church. Thus, I suspected he was dating someone, and sure enough, he was. Consequently, I never presumed I’d have a chance to date him. I commenced stomping down any feelings I might have for him, and I was just friendly and social like I’d be with any guys who are married (even though he is single (but since he was in this relationship, I was going ahead and treating him as being off limits)).
At a church event this fall, he was flirting with me some, so I asked him about that relationship. To make a long story short, I wrote the last post after we’d flirted at that event and they were still together; hence my despair about it ever going anywhere. However, this week, they decided to officially split. I was a bit in shock when he told me.
He has told me that he wants some time before we date; however, I would say that there are some promising rains in the future!
Oddly enough, he told me this week too that he really likes my hair color; it was completely unprompted and I hadn’t told him about my plans to color it at all! I’m still changing it, but that was rather ironic, I thought.
I’m really happy!
I’ve been praying and trying to discern God’s plan for my life. He was too (praying and trying to discern God’s plan for his life), as it turns out. Maybe this is part of the plan. It is hard to know. Sometimes, even with prayer, it can be hard to discern the path. But today, the path seems less murky than it did last week!
I took this photo of my niece trying to carry a bunch of different balls as she walked across the yard, and it just seems like the perfect photo to be made into a poster about life and the juggling act so many of us do everyday.
Notice that she has managed not to drop any! Interesting that she has learned that at such a young age!
You might read the title of this blog post and think, “Gee, Danielle is commenting on the recent rain in Texas.” And that would be, in part, correct. Yes, it rained here. A LOT over the weekend; it was really terrific.
But another drought has finally ended in my life, and that is what I have taken to thinking of as the drought I’ve been in with regards to men.
I’ve been divorced now for a year, and alone for longer than that. And it was a little over a week ago that a guy finally showed some interest in me! Note, I have NOT said that I’m in a new relationship. But it is nice to have someone flirt with me and to finally feel attractive and pretty again. There are multiple positive aspects of those interactions including that I now have a bit more confidence in myself. However, the downside is that it was merely a flirtation that has gone nowhere, and it has, in some ways, made me more lonely than I was before it happened.
Why? Because it reminded me of what I’ve been lacking in my life.
You see, most of the time, I’m pretty busy with school, church, and getting together with family, and I don’t have too much free time where I miss having companionship. However, in the late evenings when I’m done with my work, and there is no activity going on at church, and life has finally slowed down some, I notice that I don’t have a guy in my life.
I’m sort of debating what I want to do about it. I’m still not ready for eHarmony or match.com or one of those dating sites. I’ve been hoping that friends of mine would know some single guys with whom I could get set up on dates. And voila! There is another professor at school (a married guy) who told me about a week ago too that he has lots of single friends in my age range. Right now, I’m deciding if I want to ask him to fix me up with someone. I’m thinking yes.
What is holding me back? I told you that he mentioned this over a week ago, right?
Ah, the thing that often holds us back, of course. Or at least, that holds me back. Fear. Fear of getting hurt, fear of rejection, fear of failure.
It is hard to fail at a committed relationship (marriage) and have the confidence to try again. Even if the new relationships would just be casual dating, the underlying fear is still there with regards to having my confidence shaken. How can I trust my own judgment? I would hope that I’ve learned a lot about myself and relationships, and that my judgment is better than ever. But I still wonder.
And I also fear that I’m a rather intense person when it comes to relationships. It helps that I’m aware of it, but I still fear that I’ll “come on too strong” or drive some really great guy away due to my intensity.
But isn’t there an adage about how “practice makes perfect”? I suppose I ought to just go for it and try to go on some casual dates so that I can practice not being so intense. Now, it is just a matter of finding those guys…
… I guess I’ll be emailing my professor friend to see if he can fix me up with some guys after all.
See, that is what can be good about blogging: I write it out and come to a conclusion. Yes, in a rather public forum, but that is okay. THIS is one of the things that is going on with me right now. Presumably, you read, because you want to know. Well, here it is.
There are many other things going on right now too (especially with church and family), but those are posts for another night. For now, I’ll start making my list of characteristics and see if this friend can find some guys that fit any of them. I guess we’ll see!
I keep thinking that I’m going to have time to finish posting about the rest of my vacation in Massachusetts, but I really don’t see it happening. So, I’m going to attempt to summarize (with the help of some photos) of the various things that I did this summer.
When I got back from my vacation and scientific meeting in Boston, I started summer research with an undergraduate student. His project involved working with RNA which degrades really easily if it is exposed to the enzymes (RNases) in dust. So, I was able to convince him, by showing him some highlight and tip sheets about working with RNA, that it was worth it to spend the first few days cleaning the lab spaces.
We ordered chemicals and primers for doing PCR and the supplies just barely arrived before I headed off to Port Aransas (TX gulf coast) for a family vacation. When we were planning the vacation, I was thinking that I wasn’t going to be doing summer research this summer. This meant that I basically had to get him up to speed and able to do the experiments by himself (or with minimal emailing/phone calls) in a short period of time. The great thing was that we did a quick RNA extraction, RT, and PCR, gel, and photo. We got a PCR result! That meant that he had a stock of RT (cDNA) to go back to while I was away and keep trying new PCR conditions. It was good for him to have to learn to work more independently and do some trouble-shooting. AND that allowed me to go to Port Aransas and hang out in the pool with my nieces, Texas Seestor, Trainwreck (bro-in-law), Mom, and Dad.
We spent all day at the pool, because my nieces were a bit afraid of the ocean again. The pools are incredible! I had a ton of fun there.
A couple of times, after supper, we went out to the beach to play in the sand.
All of the photos from that trip are on Flickr in a set.
When I got back from vacation, I went back to working with my undergrad all week long on research. I also wrote a Letter of Intent for a grant proposal. It was basically a 1 page summary of all of the parts of the grant; I think I had 2 pages of references for that one page (single-spaced) of writing. It was rather intense. But I did get it accepted and am now trying to find/make the time to write the full grant! (due October 10th which is really soon! – I really need to turn it in about a week or so early)
As an aside, science writing is one of the things that I really dread. Once I start, I’m usually okay at it, but it takes me a long, long time. This is one small part of why I decided I didn’t want to be a full-time PI at a big research institution where all of the funding depends on grants and publications. It just isn’t my passion. However, mentoring students IS my passion. So, a small school setting makes so much more sense for me. But I am finding that the funding is really an issue when it comes to doing molecular biology research. We only had $1200 this summer for a 10 week RT-PCR project! We spent 1/3 of that on the enzymes to do the RT and 1/3 of that on the enzymes to do the PCR! That didn’t leave a whole lot of wiggle room for chemicals for the RNA extraction, filter tips, RNase-free tubes, etc.
However, we did find out that we could cut all of our reactions in half to make them last longer. And we found other ways to stretch our small amount of money. But that isn’t going to be enough to do cell culture in future summers; which is why I’m writing a grant. We are also trying to get some local businesses to donate some money. I’ll be spending more time on that this year, I believe.
Anyway, around the time that the letter of intent was due, I went to the 4th of July parade in our town.
Towns from towns all around had floats to promote their local festivals and show off their festival queens and festival princesses.
There were a fair number of horses (drill teams) and cars (car clubs) too.
Other summer activities included going to the annual ice cream party hosted by some friends.
There were 17 flavors this year!
They have a really great pool, so I spent most of the party with my nieces in the pool. It was such fun! I was so glad to be invited. It is hard to fathom that they make 17 flavors of ice cream and host such a huge party each year.
We also saw Footloose at an outdoor park in Austin. Next year, they are doing the Sound of Music. Some of my friends (neighbors of Texas Seestor and Trainwreck) are organizers of the musicals and perform in the musicals (the very accomplished teen in the family), so it is always great fun to see the show. There is a wealth of talented performers in Austin, so the local productions are just amazing.
At the end of the summer, I went with them to see Hairspray – another summer Austin musical. And it was fabulous too! Seeing those shows were definitely some of the high points of my summer.
Near the end of the summer, and just before school was starting up, Mom and Dad baby-sat my nieces so that Texas Seestor, Trainwreck and I could see the last Harry Potter movie. We saw it in 3D IMAX, which was just incredible!
The 3-D part didn’t matter as much as the IMAX. I wish I could see ALLL my movies in IMAX. It was the first time I’d seen a traditional movie (and not just an hour-long IMAX movie) on an IMAX screen. WOW! The sound was just incredible!
Mom and Dad also baby-sat right at the very end of the summer so that Texas Seestor, Trainwreck, and I could go to the Schlitterbahn waterpark for the day and stay until it closed.
There were two watercoaster rides that we rode that were just incredible. The Wolf Pack was the raft ride that we rode when we first arrived. Dragon’s Revenge is their newest ride and had EIGHT uphill sections where blasts of water shot Texas Seestor and I uphill (on a two-person raft)! It was AMAZING! Both of them had pretty long waits (about an hour), but we knew before we went that all of the big rides would have long lines (even on a weekday). We rode the Black Knight at the end of the day when the line was shorter; it is a black, enclosed tube, which is rather unsettling, but definitely adds to the adrenaline rush.
Other things about Schlitterbahn that I hadn’t realized was just how many inner tube rides there are! I was envisioning the type of waterpark that I’d gone to as a teen where we went on a lot of body slides and rode mats on the slides. Schlitterbahn is almost entirely raft and tube rides; it makes for many fewer bruises!
And I also discovered that a “tube shoot” is basically like going over a (small) waterfall on a tube. They are crazy fun.
Going to Schlitterbahn was the last thing I did before I started work again at school. We literally went on a Tuesday and I had all-day faculty meetings the next day on Wednesday. Classes started the following Wednesday for me. It was a great way to end the summer.
Speaking of classes, I’m teaching 2 sections each for 2 courses that I taught last year. That is helping me a lot with my course prep, because a lot of what I prepared last year (powerpoints), I can use again this year. But I’m also tweaking and revising things that I want to improve. Also, I’ve designed their workload differently as far as the type of prep they do before they come to lecture each time. It makes it so that I have to get their Incomplete Notes posted online earlier than in past years. But thus far, the students seem to be responding well to the new structure. Their first exam is next Friday, so I’ll see how they do!
In other news, I am singing regularly with my church Praise Band, and I have been encouraged by the lead singer to find some songs where I can do solos. We did a song by Casting Crowns (Glorious Day) which was in a perfect spot in my range. I did a couple of solo verses on that song, and I sort of surprised myself at how well I could sing it when it was in such a good spot in my range! I surprised some people at church too! That experience has helped me get some additional confidence in singing solo or in a more exposed setting where the instrumentals have backed off in volume.
I continue to spend most weekends (at least Saturday) with family. We played a lot of slip-n’-slide, baby-pool, squirt bottles, this summer in attempts to stay cool amidst the 100+ degree weather.
Dad got their used golf cart up and running, so one of the fun activities when we are at Mom and Dad’s is to go on golf cart rides. We especially go in the evenings when the sun is setting and it is cooling off.
That is a view of one of the first-ever golf cart rides as you look out across the golf course from my parents’ back deck. There is another road on the other side of the course.
When we are at Mom and Dad’s we also enjoy watching out for deer.
You can see how dry it is in their yard. They had to stop watering their grass a while back this summer when water levels dropped to a certain amount.
Mom and Dad also had a couple of owls that were living in their trees out front.
Here is a photo of just one of them.
As the tree got more brown, the owl became easier to spot.
Of course, when it sat on the roof, it was really easy to see!
Well, I think that covers the majority of my news from the summer. I hope to not go quite so long between posts. But with school and then with getting sick (I have some sort of cough right now), I haven’t had a whole lot of time to write long posts. Now that I’m more “caught up,” I hope to post small things more frequently!
I am still not on facebook. One of these days, I’ll get to it. But for right now, I need to go water my plants, prep some Incomplete Notes for lectures, clean my apartment, and work on my grant!
On Wednesday after Memorial Day, SeaQueen and I went to her parents’ house on Cape Cod. I’ve been to their house in Woods Hole many times, but she and I had never really toured around the Cape much. This time, we had planned on going out to Martha’s Vineyard, but the weather was supposed to be stormy on the day when we had time to go (Wed afternoon and evening). So, we ended up visiting with her neighbor, going to a local gardens, going out to eat, baking cookies (the kind that come in a tube of dough), and we watched a Sandra Bullock movie that night.
This is the place that had the neat millstones in the landscaping.
It also had some anchors and an old bell.
Once again, the rhododendrons and azaleas were blooming.
It was really neat having the gardens be right next to the water.
All of the anchors were really interesting.
One of the paths started out simply enough.
And rapidly became a bit more interesting.
I definitely didn’t want to lose my footing and go tumbling down the hill!
It was really lovely.
As we were leaving, there was a wild rabbit in the grass eating his supper.
He was so teeny-tiny compared to Max!
Here is a photo of Max – I know there is nothing in the photo to give you a good reference for his size – but that willow-cube toy is about 3 inches in each direction.
The next day was the last day of our vacation together, and SeaQueen and I drove out to Provincetown. I’ll tell you about that tomorrow.
I’m continuing my story about my vacation out east to Rhode Island and New England to see SeaQueen and go to a scientific conference. There are additional posts about our trip on Memorial Day to the azalea garden and to the Gilbert Stuart birthplace.
Upon leaving the Gilbert Stuart birthplace, we headed back to SeaQueen’s place via a scenic route. We were just going to drive past Narragansett Pier and beach, but it looked so neat, that I convinced SeaQueen that we should park and walk around. We ended up checking out the surfing, paddleboarding, and the two towers.
It was really fun to be at the ocean and hear the waves crashing.
There was also a certain energy at the beach that I can’t quite put my finger on; it was an air of excitement, but also something else. Maybe exhilaration? It was that feeling of people desperate to squeeze every last drop of fun out of a weekend that was rapidly drawing to a close. There were definitely a lot of people who were checking out other people, so maybe it was sexual tension too. Whatever it was, it made for an interesting energy.
I don’t have any photos of our evening spent with SeaQueen’s friends and newborn baby girl. We had a fun time visiting with each other; we ate good food and played Apples to Apples, which was rather funny.
I don’t have any photos of our Tuesday trip to Six Flags New England. But it was AMAZING!
We were convinced that since school was still in session (recall that this was the Tuesday after Memorial Day), all of the kids would still be in school and the lines would be miniscule. Well, imagine our surprise/disappointment, when we got to our first ride of the day – a coaster, of course – Bizarro – and the line was over 30 minutes long! Bizarro is the ride that replaced Superman. It was our absolute favorite ride at the park. We ended up starting our day with Bizarro, and ending it with two back-to-back rides on Bizarro. By the end of the day, the lines WERE miniscule, because the kids had all boarded their buses and gone home.
What did I love about Bizarro, as opposed to Batman or others? Well, it was FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAST and it went HIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGH!
I just looked up some stats and it goes up 20 stories and the first drop is 221 ft.
It goes up to 77 mph!
Boy did it get my adrenaline flowing! So much so that I felt a little ill when we road it back-to-back at the end of the day. But it is just an incredible, incredible coaster.
Also, the restraints on it are MUCH better than any other coaster I’ve ridden.
The restraint is this huge padded yellow thing that covers your midsection (you can see it on the screen capture above). I don’t like the ones that come down over my shoulders, like on Batman (see below), because I end up banging my head against them too much. The designers of Bizarro really solved that problem well.
We rode coaster after coaster that day.
We also went on some water rides, because it did start getting pretty hot about halfway through the day. We really got soaked on the river rapids ride. We rode the swings, which was quite breezy and relaxing.
It was the first that I’d been to an amusement park and rode coaster after coaster in a really long time. It was a blast!
After leaving the azalea gardens (described previously), SeaQueen and I ventured to the birthplace of Gilbert Stuart – portrait artist (painter). This is a place that SeaQueen had not heard of, but when we were worried of being rained out at the beach (and I went searching online for tourism), I spotted the entry in the “museums” section. I had no idea who Gilbert Stuart was, but I saw that it had a gristmill and snuff mill with functional waterwheels, which was enough for me to want to go see it.
(snuff mill on left, gristmill on right)
I’ve always been fascinating by mills and the workings of mills.
The tour guide was fabulous! Here he is describing how millstones have grooves in them.
The bottom stone stays in one place, and the top one is the one that spins and grinds (powered by the flow of water across the wheel, of course). They are both grooved. Millstones can have different groove patterns, as was evidenced by the different millstones that SeaQueen and I saw in a different park/gardens in Massachusetts. At that park, the millstones were part of the landscaping which was really unique and creative (shown below).
The story of Gilbert Stuart is rather interesting. He is the artist who painted the (unfinished) image of George Washington that is used on the dollar bill.
This is a sheet of one dollar bills from the mint that have not been cut.
Gilbert Stuart also painted images of many of the early U.S. presidents. I like the one he did of Dolley Madison (below).
All of the paintings are reproductions, because his art is too valuable to be housed at the birthplace where there is poor temperature and humidity control and inadequate security. I guess someone on the trustees committee for the birthplace once had the bright idea of housing an original on the grounds; they advertised it, and it got stolen!
Anyway, the story of Gilbert Stuart is also linked to the snuff mill, which made it very interesting to me. Snuff is the powdered tobacco that men and women used to stuff up their noses to get a buzz (before smoking tobacco became more common). This will be no surprise to my fellow lovers of historical fiction who are familiar with characters who kept their snuffboxes handy and who always kept a handkerchief handy for their brown dribbling noses (rather disgusting sounding – but isn’t smoking just as disgusting? – I digress).
Anyway, prior to this time period (mid 1750s), there were zero snuff mills in the U.S. So, any tobacco that was grown here in the states had to be shipped to Europe to be ground into snuff and then shipped BACK to the states for sale. Well, a rich person in Rhode Island (RI) decided that he was going to make a bunch of money by bypassing the shipments to and from Scotland by building the first colonial snuff mill in the states that could mill the locally-grown tobacco. He needed someone experienced to run the mill. So he recruited Gilbert Stuart’s dad and family to move from Scotland to RI to run the mill!
Gilbert was born at the snuff mill in RI and grew up in this relatively wealthy family. He showed a tendency to draw and color. A visitor from Scotland who was an artist, recognized Gilbert’s talent and convinced Gilbert and his family to allow Gilbert to study with him in Europe when Gilbert was in his teens. On the voyage to Scotland, Gilbert was tutored and mentored by this artist. However, the person either died on the voyage or died shortly after their arrival in Scotland! I don’t recall when the tutor died. What I distinctly remember our tour guide telling us was that Gilbert was all alone in Scotland with no money, no credit, and he knew no one! Also that he “must have” been getting some training on the long voyage from the states to Scotland, because his painting improved in just that short period of time. Gilbert ended up getting various odd jobs and (literally) working his way back to the U.S. again; I think he may have worked on the ship in order to have passage. When Gilbert was 20, he moved to England to study with Benjamin West, a famous painter.
His early work was not very good, compared to what he would be capable of later in life.
And then with time he was capable of this kind of work:
That one is my favorite. It is called “The Skater” and won him acclaim in 1782; he was 27 years old! The original is actually really large; our tour guide showed us a photo of him (I think) standing next to it in the gallery where it hangs.
The Wikipedia entry for Gilbert Stuart says that over the course of his life, Gilbert painted over 1,000 portraits. You should check out that entry if you want to see a list of the names of people whose portraits he painted and images of his paintings.
The other thing that was really neat about the birthplace was all of the aspects of colonial living that were on display. There are too many photos for me to post here but they are in a set here.
Herbs were dried behind the fireplace in the fancy, upstairs, rarely-used, living room.
A bench with a nanny board (like a short fence) allowed a woman to sit on the bench and have a small child next to her; the nanny board would keep the child from rolling off of the bench. The board could be removed so that a couple of adults/older children could sit on it.
This next photo is fuzzy, because I took it really fast. But the idea is that a well-made bed was so expensive, and fire was so common, that people kept the tools for dismantling the bed hanging on the bed post. If a fire would break out, they grabbed the tool and dismantled the bed quickly!
Can you imagine living in an age where fire is so common that you have to be able to quickly dismantle your bed for safe-keeping?
I liked the bedside table, because it had eyeglasses, old books, and a neat candle stand on it.
The spinning wheel was very large
as was the loom (sitting next to the grinding mechanism of the snuff mill).
My absolute favorite part of the whole tour was seeing the snuff mill actually be put into gear so that the pestle grinds the mortar (probably not the correct terminology). There is a video in the set on Flickr that shows it in action. Here is the video embedded in this post (hopefully one of those will work for you!):
Here is a photo too.
All in all, it was a really wonderful day! I learned many new things about colonial living and mills, I learned about a famous american artist, and SeaQueen and I had a lovely picnic on the grounds. It was quite a nice way to spend our Memorial Day in lieu of going to the beach!
Before I go back to telling you about my trip in June out east and other summer news I need to write a quick post about my weekend.
I went to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 2 in IMAX 3-D today!!!! Texas Seestor, Trainwreck, and I went to the movie while Mom and Dad graciously babysat my nieces tonight. Thanks again, Mom and Dad!
I will not say anything about the movie specifically, but I DO want to say that I LOVED it!!!
AND I now want to see aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaall movies in IMAX. OMG, I can tell why people spend the extra money to see them in IMAX on a regular basis. The picture! The sound! The bass actually rumbles so hard that I felt it all over. I felt the explosions in my chest.
Oh and here is a funny bit of conversation:
After a couple of previews, Trainwreck said to me “…………….”
To which I replied “What did you say?”
His response “Of course, we’ll all be deaf by the time we leave.”
ha! I guess I was already going deaf, since I didn’t hear him the first time. However, I didn’t really mind that the previews and movie were loud; it wasn’t like it made my ears ring or anything.
As for the movie, I watched Half-Blood Prince and Deathly Hallows 1 a week or two ago. I’m really glad that I’d seen Deathly Hallows 1 recently. I’m also glad that it has been a long time since I’ve read the book. I had forgotten parts of the story. The movie was excellent.
Or as Hermione would say, “Brilliant!”
I am soooooooooooo glad that our friend recommended seeing it in IMAX. We were originally going to go see it at a regular theatre, and decided last night after talking to a friend that we’d splurge and see it in IMAX. And none of us even realized that today is Harry’s birthday (and J.K. Rowling’s).
Happy Birthday, Harry and J.K.!
Go see it if you haven’t yet. And go see a big action movie in IMAX sometime. If you are a Harry Potter fan, I, of course, recommend that this be the one you see in IMAX.
I FINALLY posted all of my photos on Flickr of my trip out east to Rhode Island and Massachusetts to see SeaQueen and go to my science conference!
Jenski was in Rhode Island at the time too, so she met SeaQueen and I for supper at a great Indian restaurant. We had a lot of fun catching up in person and talking about all the stuff that we don’t talk about on our blogs. We had all worked together (in separate labs) in MA back when I was getting my Ph.D. They both went on to get their PhDs at different schools and are now post-docs. I’m glad we got together.
SeaQueen and I had all kinds of plans to meet up with her lab-mates and go to the beach on Memorial Day after breakfast. Well, on our drive home from breakfast, we saw a parade gathering. I got online to see where the parade was going to be (in case there was time to see a bit of it, OR if we needed to adjust our route accordingly), and the website said that the parade was canceled for severe weather!? severe weather? weren’t we going to go to the beach? Well, it turns out that everyone had assumed that someone else had looked at the weather to see if it was a good beach-going day. We started trying to come up with things to do that would be inside (like a museum) or located close by and cheap so that if we got rained out we could just bail on it really fast.
We ended up having more fun, we both think, than if we’d gone to the beach. We went to an azalea garden and spent a couple of hours taking photos!
It was one of the best times I’ve had going somewhere and taking photos. Usually, I’m with people who are NOT taking photos and thus don’t want to move at my snail’s pace. But SeaQueen had recently got a DSLR body from a friend who upgraded her camera; SeaQueen bought a lens and was ready to go super slow at the gardens too.
I have many, many photos of the gardens on Flickr. Here are a few of my favorites.
No, those are not azaleas. They are irises. But they were so gorgeous, they are my favorite photos of the day.
THOSE are azaleas.
And these next ones are rhododendrons (same family, different structure in how the blossoms cluster). They were in bloom too and were just gorgeous!
And then riiiiiiiiiight as we were taking these photos of the fencing made of vines, the rain started! We were at the end of the tour of the gardens, fortunately.
One of the things I’ve done in the 2 weeks that I’ve been off work – other than try to catch up on sleep – is make a little patio garden outside my front door of my apartment.
I saw that large plant at Home Depot, and was struck by the gorgeous colors of the leaves and the flowers of the one that was blooming. I chose a different one that was not blooming, but looked really healthy. And my patience was rewarded after about a week.
That is what they looked like about a week ago.
This was what actually popped up one evening.
And the next day, it had bloomed!
It is a Canna var. “Phasion” – the label from Home Depot called it a Tropicanna from Anthony Tesselaar USA Inc. in Lawndale, CA. The Home Depot cashier who checked me out told me that it is actually a bulb plant and will come back year after year! With being in a container, I’ll likely have to do something to keep it from freezing during the winter. But the price was right (I think it was under $15), so I decided to get it even if it was only good for this one year. I’ve been thrilled with it so far! It is on its 5th or 6th flower right now!
I’m really hoping that everything survives my vacation. I’ve got friends and family coming in to check on Max (rabbit) and water my flowers. Max is clearly more important, but the plants are living things too, so I’d like to see them survive. It has been really hot here; in the 90′s – but my place is partly shaded during the day, so they all seem to be thriving.
I’m headed to RI and MA for vacation to see SeaQueen and for a scientific conference! I need to go finish my packing, I fly out today. It won’t be long now!
