Bloom Day

Bloom day is destroying my life. I always force bulbs during the winter, so I had a pot of dwarf irises which just finished flowering a couple weeks ago, and I have a pot a hyacinths which are just about to bloom, as you can see in this picture:

Normally I would be perfectly happy with this: Flowering bulbs for most of the winter is a good thing, and a week or two between one finishing and another starting is perfect.

But NOW, thanks to Carol and bloom day, I'm just frustrated that neither of them decided to bloom for the 15th!

Luckily, this little african violet in my office comes to my rescue:

Which is hardly surprising -- it pretty much is ALWAYS flowering. It seems all they really need is warmth -- when I had it in my house, which I like to keep cold in the winter, it pouted all the time. Brought it into my overheated office at school/work, and it is as happy as can be -- even if I don't water it for weeks at a time (persisting lack of water does stop the flowering, but it picks up again as soon as I stop neglecting it.)

And with that: I've survived the last of the truely difficult bloom days -- next month, I should have crocuses, aconite, witch hazel, and snowdrops, and I'll be good until November -- and next winter, I'll be prepared. I'm going to force SO many bulbs next winter I won't have room in the fridge for anything else.

Gardening inside

Here is a time line of the events leading up to today's post. (photos are of most of the windows in my house. The reason for that will become apparent.)

1/15/2010: Carol, as always, hosts Bloom Day. Bloggers in cold areas everywhere complained they had no flowers because it was January and posted pictures of lampshades and chairs instead.

1/17/2010: Mr. Subjunctive posts a rant about the lack of winter blooms stating that: "Winter is not an excuse. It never was. Now go buy an African violet before February 15 or I will come to your blog and kick your ass."

1/20/2010, 8:16 am: I do my weekly "Wednesday Links" post, including a link to Mr. Subjunctive's rant, and make a sort of half-hearted promise to order a lazy cop-out collection of random winter flowering house plants.

1/20/2010, 9:17 am: Mr. Subjunctive comes to my blog and writes a comment. A very long comment. Actually, I think it is so long it technically qualifies as a guest post, in which he details some winter flowering house plants he does and does not recommend.

1/20/2010, 5:00 pm, heading home from work: Hit by a double dose of full strength Mr. Subjunctive, I finally start really thinking about his point and ask myself this question: Why DON'T I treat the inside of my house as just as much a garden as the outside?

1/20/2010, 7:00pm, after dinner: I start getting excited. Way too excited. I look at my pitiful windowsills (which basically are refugee camps for things from last years outdoor garden that I'm hoping will pull through until spring) and start having visions of lush, well-designed gardens of contrasting foliage textures and rich, fragrant displays of winter flowers.

1/20/2010, 9:00pm: I have filled several pages of my notebook with ideas for windowsill gardens. My list of plants to buy starts getting longer. I take "before" pictures of all the windows in the house. My long-suffering partner asks what on earth I am doing, and is subjected to a 20-minute exposition on my rapturous conversion to the cult of indoor gardening.

1/21/2010: I sit in my office at school supposedly writing a paper, but really googling things like: billbergia, trailing african violets and philodendron. I call my partner to tell him we're going to an orchid show this weekend.

So that is the story. I'm going nuts. I'm determined that next winter will be full of lovely and interesting things to post about and enjoy. We'll see how it turns out. By the way, Mr. S.: You need to make more lists. Specifically, I need a list of: House plants with frilly/ferny/fluffy foliage. Also: Plants with a viny, trailing, weepy growth habit. Not to mention: Plants with dark purple/red/maroon foliage. Oh! And things with fragrant flowers. Not to, like, tell you how to do your job or anything, but still. I'd like to see those lists.

January Bloom Day

 Once again, it is Bloom Day!

We have several inches of snow on the ground at the moment, so no chance of blooms outside (though the next few days are supposed to be warm, so I might see the ground this weekend!)

But inside I have paperwhites doing their pretty but stinky thing:

And at work I have a whole greenhouse full of petunias also doing a pretty but stinky thing

I'm working with wild petunias, some of which are incredibly smelly. Actually, they have a nice smell -- but this many of them in an enclosed space gets a little over powering!

And when I really need a break from winter, I wander over to the greenhouse next door, where my friend D is doing research on orchids:

Thank goodness for greenhouses! There are certainly good and bad things about being in grad school -- but the greenhouses are most decidedly one of the good ones!

Bloom Day December 2009

This is only my second bloom day and I was worried I would have nothing to show. Outside everything is covered is snow, so even if it WERE blooming, I wouldn't know it, or be able to take a picture of it. And I'm not much of a house plant person, so inside, all I had was this mum, a leftover from a friend's research

and this kalanchoe, a gift from my... what do you call her? My aunt-in-law, I guess. (what is the proper term for your spouse's aunt?)

I thought I was going to have to resort to the paper snowflakes I made, "blooming" on the Christmas tree (I'm not sure why the tree came out blue... it is actually green. I was messing around with the evaluative white balance on my camera, this happened, and I decided I like it)

But then I had a thought: My research for my PhD involves a whole greenhouse full of blooming plants! Not technically my garden, but close enough! Quite a brilliant idea, if I do say so myself. There is anyways something blooming at work! I shall never be without on a bloom day. Well, until I graduate anyway...

Salvia cacaliifolia

Salvia involucrata

Happy Bloom Day everyone!

November Bloom Day

I've never participated in Carol's Garden Bloggers Bloom Day before, where on the 15th of every month bloggers from all over post about what is flowering in their garden, but the contrarian in me like the challenge of trying to post monthly with flowers from my garden... starting in November. In Michigan.

And, unsurprisingly, there isn't much! But I do have:

A couple snapdragons:

A few Verbena canadensis:

And one bud on one of my favorite roses, 'New Dawn' which isn't quite in bloom yet, but will probably make it into flower if the weather stays mild:

And that's it, folks. Whatever am I going to do for December? And January!