House Plant Memories

I’ve always liked growing things. When I was a kid my Grandpa and my Aunt knew of my interest and used to occasionally give me house plants. I remember Grandpa Angelo giving me a poinsettia plant once, and a plant with mini colorful hot peppers on it. Those peppers were way too hot to ever eat, at least for me they were.

Aunt Kay gave me cuttings of a plant she called “Wandering Jew”, not very politically correct, but that was what she called (actually known as tradescantia zebrina). She also gave me an African violet; she had some on the windowsill in her kitchen. That started a love affair I have had with those violets, ever since!!

               

For a while I had a plant shelf, with lights and all set up in the house and I had several African violets growing on it. I am way too busy now to have many plants around. I forget to water them! But, I do have one miniature violet on my kitchen window ledge that, of course, needs to be watered! Other kinds of houseplants I particularly enjoy are, pothos vines,

various types of cacti (mammilaria is a favorite) and succulents, and other denizens of the family Gesneriaceae , which the African violet belongs to such as sinningia, episcia, and the goldfish plant. Specimen plants that I have had have been orchids, bromeliads, and amaryrillis flowers.

  

 Bromeliads have a good and bad side-the flowering plant lasts a very long time but the whole plant dies when the flower dies.

Extreme Sheep LED Art

My first modeling Job!

Check me out in an advertisement for PDN news, a photography journal that my nephew Bryan did an ad for. I am the Italian woman in the window! You can see it on his wife's blog at:

http://web.me.com/taminiven/Nonsense/Blog/Entries/2011/1/15_Entry_1.html

What Santa Brought

For Christmas, Santa brought me something my heart had been desiring for a few years. That desire was a new washer and dryer. Woo Hoo!  I was certainly tired of only having some of the cycles work on the washer, and finding rusty chunks of metal periodically in the wash tub (and they always stained one of my favorite shirts). Hubby had resurrected the thing at least twice with his fix-it skills in its long life of 29 years at our house. I did not want it resurrected any more. The dryer was still useful, the drum was just very banged up from years of drying all those denim jeans. But when you get new ones, you gotta get a matching pair, right??

When hubby asked me what I wanted for Christmas I told him…..but since I had said it so many times before I was not expecting to hear “O.K. let’s go look at some,” come out of his mouth. He was serious! After looking for about a month at several stores, viola! I found myself admiring a spanking new washer and dryer pair installed in my laundry room a few days before Christmas. I love them so much doing laundry is not half as detestable as it used to be, and since the washer holds so many clothes I actually do less loads than before. I love them so much I gave them a big hug! The clincher for my outstanding admiration for these two wonderful life-simplifying items is the cool sound each appliance emits at the end of the cycle. No more ugly sounding buzzers, that’s so yesterday, these babies each play a funky little digital tune when the cycle is done! I smile every time I hear it.

A New Year

The Joy of a New Year

I’ve been thinking about starting a blog for a while now. I had one on Yahoo for a while but the forum I was using was discontinued and I never updated to the new one. January can be a time of doldrums, the weather is generally gloomy this time of year, I miss the sunshine and there isn’t much to look forward to after the full days of the holidays’ just past.

I’m wondering if I am the only one who feels relieved that Christmas is over. Don’t get me wrong, I love Christmas, but it seems like the holiday has become awfully complicated lately. There is so much preparation, it feels endless sometimes. I am relieved for it to be over. Does that make me a Grinch?? The real meaning of the holiday gets lost amid all the preparations. Besides wasn’t Christ really born in the springtime? Shouldn‘t we celebrate his birth then?

As if Christmas was not all encompassing in and of itself, in our family I have to deal with three of my children’s birthdays in Dec., and my wedding anniversary on Dec. 27^th. These occasions add to the craziness of December at our house and I just wind up getting exhausted!

With January here I know the days will soon be getting longer. I have my gardening catalogs to look over! I can indulge in one of my favorite pastimes of reading a good book in a comfy chair with a cozy blanket, a cup of cocoa, and a warming fireplace nearby.

What are you reading this January? I read two or three books at a time, all the time, depending on my mood…currently reading Assassin’s Creed Renaissance (based on the computer game) by Oliver Bowden, Black Ships by Jo Graham, and Between the Testaments (from Malachi to Matthew) by S. Kent Brown and Richard N. Holzapfel