reaching for the light

A watercolor impression of Heliconia estherae

from a photograph by Axel Dalberg Poulsen, a tropical forest botanist studying

the taxonomy and evolution of gingers.

Heliconia estherae is now known in the wild in only two municipalities in Columbia; Dr. Poulsen's photograph was taken in the Singapore Botanic Gardens.

We may not be a tropical zone here in Massachusetts,

but the daylight is lengthening:

Do you ever use SunriseSunset.com to make a free calendar for your specific location? I often do, and since it is up to the user how many types of information are included, I ask for lots of things. The last one here - "Len" - is length of daylight.

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update

The wild ginger is beginning to unfold!

So.
It's been 10 days of internetting on a wing and a prayer...reading blogs and sometimes managing to leave a comment, but not blogging. Using twitter because it's short and fast, but rarely succeeding at posting even low-resolution images - which I don't much enjoy posting, anyway.

Raindrops on new columbine.
Nearly every photograph I've taken lately has been during, or just after. a rainstorm.
It's been...wet.

Short repair recap: after two visits - the second today - from a very nice Tech person, and five new parts, HP says I now must send the laptop in. The good news is, I'm still under warranty. The bad news is, I will now be internetting on my small, non-fancy cellphone, for who knows how long.

In the past week I’ve already begun to feel sort of isolated and with the prospect of sending the laptop to sleep-away camp, I can almost imagine myself drifting right out of the internet and vanishing.

I guess we’ll see!

The maples began flowering on Saturday!
Even in the rain, there is a reddish tinge to the canopy.

MEANWHILE...

I want to tell you about a fundraiser to get an MRI scanner on Shetland. I’ve been following this community effort for a while, and was especially impressed by a woman who went out and gathered seeds from native Shetland wildflowers to sell in little packets for the MRI fund. Unfortunately for me, she couldn’t send them to the US.
But what a great idea!

And now...a lovely woman has handknit a Fair Isle pullover and is selling it on eBay with all the money going to the MRI fund. If you’ve ever wanted a genuine Fair Isle sweater, here’s your chance to bid on a beauty. It’s got soft colors and is made of vintage Patons Moorland pure Shetland wool. Did I mention hand-knitted?

Please pass this info along if you can –  I'm not sure how much "reach" the knitter has, and it’s such a good cause. And it's such a generous gesture on the part of the knitter. I am in awe! Please share my awe!

Here is what I hope is a working link to the eBay page

I wish I could post a picture here. Even if you are not interested in acquiring a wooly sweater, it’s worth a click just to look at the pictures. Check out the view of the inside!

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Well, I just dropped it to say hello, spend a couple of hours trying to upload photographs, and then go back out in the rain to move goats for the night. The photographs loaded slooooowly but they seem to be here - huzzah! Maybe I'll try to load some drawings and schedule them to post while my laptop is away. Like sending postcards. Just so you don't forget me :)

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tuesday tidbits

During the recent week of rain, the amazing epimedium continued to produce masses of tiny gem-like flowers:

 The flowers are passing, but look at what the leaves are doing!

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In other perennial news, the little wild ginger plant I added last summer was one of the first plants to return this year. It's leaves looked exceptionally lush against a palette of Forest Floor:

Charming, isn't it? 

One day I made a little line drawing:

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Several readers have asked about Project Windowbox.

Thanks for asking! Here's an update.

The design decisions were easy, thanks to all the good advice I received here. I am very grateful! This is the kind of thing that can hang fire for years while I hem and haw. The choices made:

1) sturdy white plastic boxes

2) continuous wooden supports built across the long walls

After a long and fruitless online search, I found boxes locally - a nice surprise. I also ordered gallons of a cedar-oil-based wood preservative, because the exterior walls of the porch needed to be protected before installing the boxes.

No big deal.

My occasional hired helper and I could work together and get it done, lickety-split.

On the right:
product applied but not yet absorbed.

Then...for nearly three weeks my occasional hired helper and I experienced a baffling series of miscommunications. By the time it was straightened out, the rainy season (it really has felt like an actual season, with soup and tea and a barn coat that never quite dried out before I had to put it on again) had begun.

So, for the past two weeks we've been working as often as weather and schedules permit. Working on several now-overdue tasks.
Working hard.

Current status: most of the porch now has two coats. The gable peak has one. A third overall coat may be needed; we'll see. Either way, fingers crossed the painting will be finished by next week. We finally had a sunny day yesterday, and another today, but my helper has not been available...so, no progress yet this week. Yes, I could crawl up that ladder and do the gable myself, but moving and setting the higher ladder is hard for me to do. So I'll wait.

Meanwhile, one more piece fell into place on Saturday, when I found a source for the potting soil recommended to me by a blogger who gardens like I can only dream of gardening. I've never been so excited about the opportunity to buy dirt. I'm really pushing the boat out on this project! 

Soon...I'll keep you posted!

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P.S.

I'm sure LeShodu would like to thank you for your kind birthday greetings, and especially the suggestion of "special carrots."

"'Special' is a unit of measurement, right?
Is it equivalent to a pound?
Or is it one carrot for each of my 12 years?"

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