This orchid reminds me of an Asian warrior or a female flamenco dancer.  Which ever interpretation you prefer, you have to admit that fighting or dancing with this beauty is going to be hot!

The interesting thing about this orchid is that it only produces one bloom at a time, but once that bloom is spent it recreates itself on the same stem.  In other words, it blooms forever (as long as you don’t cut the stem).  At least that is what they told me at Sundance Orchids.  We’ll see.

This idea of producing one flower at a time (spectacular though it is) is almost foreign to me.  I love the results but I cannot imagine that I am even remotely capable of such sigularity or focus.  In my world, there are always dozens of creations in various stages of production.  Most get finished at some point, but some do not.  I don’t seem to be bothered by the unfinished ones, so I am spared self-reproach.  Things change.  Some things that seemed like good ideas or even important projects lose that quality with the passage of time.  I’m good with that.  My grandfather called me a dilettante.  He was right.  I will always be a amateur at many things but never a master of any.  Again, that is just fine with me.

I hope that wherever you fall on that spectrum between dilettante and master, that you too are also just fine with how you are and what you produce.  If not, give yourself a break this weekend and have a little ego chill.  You are just fine the way you are.  Bloom on!

When I was a child (OK I still do this) I would look for figures in the clouds.  Most kids and a lot of adults still do that.  But one of my happiest memories was moving into a new home at age 5-6 and discovering that the the walls of my new bedroom were covered with plaster images…the same images but with more detail than the clouds held for me.  No matter my reason for being banned to my bedroom (and there were many), I always enjoyed the time imagining and creating worlds in the relief plaster walls.  Now, of course, I am older and more sophisticated.  That means I see images in almost everything I look at.  Think abstract and the opposite of that would be my mind!

One of the advantages of older age (I’m not allowed to say old age) is that I can’t see as clearly as I could as a child.  But the iPhone has been my equalizer.  What once captured my attention because it was minute and unseen (by most) is now available to me through iphonography (I know it sounds like pornography) and this is a perfect example.  Without this technology, I would never have seen this royal face with upraised yellow fangs and thrusting pink tongue.  Can you see it?  Its like looking at clouds.  If you don’t see the demon, what do you see?  Think clouds.  If you don’t see anything, that’s good too…maybe you like math.

Whether you are like me and always distracted by the comparative miracles occurring around you or you have a more sensible mind that does not recognize silly analogies and requires that we make this world what we want, still I say look at this figure.  Whether anthropomorphic or just a pretty picture, you have to admit it is a really well composed picture taken with an I Phone.

This week, just for one week, judge everything that you see and hear from a place of it is as it should be; whether mysterious or measurable, it is as it should be.  You win…you’re right.

Lavendar spots

Okay, sometimes I lose my mind.  The good news is the mind loss is only associated with beauty.  I was scheduled to have a hair appointment with a new stylist (all us female or female identified can relate).  My BFF had asked for a break from 6-7 days of resort management and wanted to make a trip with me to Sundance Orchids.  I agreed and after my hair appointment we were then to go to orchid and bromeliad utopia.  Unfortunately the resort business does not allow for future plans, especially ones that would renourish.  She had to cancel.  I thought, “I’m sorry for her loss but I probably saved a bundle.”

I had no intention to go to Sundance without her.  Still, there I was somehow, an orchid/bromeliad junkie in the alley doing plant highs.  I have no other explanation for this plant encounter other that addiction.  She had a brother/sister that first caught my eye but they were at the end of their bloom and she was only half way through.  This attractive interlope was more chocolate than the girl I chose, but the extension of life was more than I could resist.  I bought her.

Later, at home and alone I thought I may already have her.  My BFF came by and assured me I already had her.  My heart told me I did not have but my mind was in torment.  Did I have her or not?  Finally, I took the tag from my latest and matched it against it the tag of my former.  Indeed, they were not the same.

What has that got anything to do with human behavior ?  Frankly, I am not going to touch that.  You figure it out.

PS.  She is an Ascadensa and the other was a Vanda.  Big deal…when you fall in love, do you really care about last names?

This is a common, prom-sized, smells great, white orchid.  From a distance it looks pure white, but up close and in the right light, it is far more complex.  I just wrote a whole Friday Flower about this orchid and then lost it all in cyber-space.  I was tired, it was late at night, so I had a first-class, two year old meltdown.  That did not help me retrieve my lost orchid and words but I did expel a ton of pent up frustration that had nothing to do with orchids.

So, after all of that drama, what do I have to say?  Nothing more than look closely at the interior of this common flower.  Isn’t there a part of you that wants to dive into the abyss and discover what is there?  Isn’t there a part of you that is touched by the delicate folds, maybe wanting that in your own life?  Isn’t there a part of you that wonders that amid all of the brown and black and white what the striated orange means?  And finally, what does the tiny green of band at the top signify?

Sometimes the most ordinary, taken for common, is really not common at all when we look closely and pause.

Please take this weekend to pause and look closely at what you take for common.

]]> http://www.sherreetales.com/2012/04/white-white-not-white/feed/ 4 http://www.sherreetales.com/2012/04/first-rain/ http://www.sherreetales.com/2012/04/first-rain/#comments Tue, 24 Apr 2012 01:15:21 +0000 Sherree http://www.sherreetales.com/?p=335

This has been the longest dry spell I remember.  I’ve lived in north Texas where we did not expect anything less than what has happened this year in semi-tropical south Florida.  Yet, when no rain falls for months at this part of the equator I begin to worry…not just for the ecology, but because I do not have an irrigation system.  Everything in my acre is dependent on a certain amount of weather predictability.  I mulch heavily.  I plant in partial shade (great in this southern climate but not so good up “north”)  I use plants that are used to this kind of climate.  But when the climate changes from south Florida to north Texas, I and my plants, are in deep doo-doo.

Someone on the OWN channel said that the difference between belief and faith is that when every belief you have is shot to hell you still have faith that things will be as they should be.  This year has been a major test of faith.  I kept looking out at these grassy things and thinking they should have bloomed a month ago.  Any of you who have been reading my blog for any time at all know that I do not know the science (or names) attached to my garden companions.  However, I do have a sense as to when they should appear.  When they don’t, I think something has gone horribly wrong and usually blame myself for not being more involved in their growth.  That’s neurotic and I am neurotic in this part of my life.

However, this time, as grandiose as it may have been, I cannot take credit for the strange and unpredictable time of glorious plant expression.  They are arriving when they arrive…and I am humbled.

This weekend, for the first time in months, it rained.  I cannot write this without tears falling.  Today, after two days of rain, this pitiful grass like plant gave us this flower.  You can still see the rain drops.

No matter what happens to your beliefs, hold on to your faith.  Life is…and will be!

 I took this photo several weeks ago and intended to write some words related to blushing, but for two weeks in a row, I had nothing to say.  Then last Saturday my cat, Baby, died.  She was 14 and a feral that adopted me almost that long ago.   She did not suffer and it was the most peaceful passing I have witnessed.

That morning Baby was her usual self, demanding food before I could awake fully, checking with me several times to make sure I was not going to give her any more food, and then going to the door (my signal to let her out) and flying down the stairs like she had urgent business to take care of.  Any time she was outside she was in race mode or sleeping.  I went to the store later that morning and was surprised that she was not sleeping in the middle of the driveway.  I was also relieved because her latest game was to refuse to move from the middle of the driveway expecting me to maneuver the car around her.  When I came home from the store she did not come out from wherever she was sleeping and run up to the front of the car.  That was her second most recent game; walking in front of the car, too close for me to see her, and leading the car to the carport.  I honestly thought that would be the way she eventually died…squished by a car.  Anyway, I was again surprised she wasn’t there but I was again relieved and attributed her absence to it being morning on a Saturday rather than early evening when I normally came home from work.

Later that afternoon I was watering the plants inside the fence.  Usually Baby has to help with that but she was still not around.  Then as I got to the front gate, I saw Baby sleeping behind a coconut palm.  She knows when I water that she needs to move but this was another game.  I told her she had better move.  She didn’t (not unusual).  I then said, “I mean it!  I’ll squirt you if you don’t move.”  The game required that I let a little of the nozzle mist land on Baby and then she would move.  But this time she didn’t.  It still did not occur to me that she was dead.  She was curled up in her usual way and just looked so peaceful.  I put the hose down and walked over to her intending to pick her up and move her.  That’s when I knew she was dead.  Even though there was no sign of distress, she was stiff when I touched her.  There in the shade of the coconut palm and behind this week’s bromeliad, Baby had laid down to sleep and had died peacefully.

I’m sad and I really miss her, but I am also so grateful for the way she chose to leave me, that she did not suffer, and that she was in the gardens that we both loved.

So I’m changing the name of this weeks flower from blushing bro to Baby’s bro.  I never found the words for blushing bro but Baby’s bro came easily.  I’m glad I waited and didn’t try to force the words.

Dance of the ground orchids and the iron lady

This week’s Friday Flower is a conundrum for me.  I showed several photos I had to friends and said I could not choose between two of them.  They said, “make that the verbal theme…the difficulty of choosing between two things that you love.”  That is a really good theme, but I was already set on telling a history of best friends.  I don’t want to do one without the other, so I will attempt to do both.

The iron lady is a statue I inherited from my former best friend, Carolyn Smith.  Before I was her best friend however, the sculptor, Sally, was her best friend.  I only remember meeting Sally once and thinking how different we were.  Sally created the iron lady…she was an artist.  She also lived in a converted barn somewhere north of Florida.  She also made her living, supported herself, as an artist.  That’s how we were most different…Sally had the courage, conviction, and actions that reminded the world she was an artist.  I’ve always had a back-up job that paid the bills.  She lived as an artist.  I played it safe.

Sally gave the iron lady to Carolyn and shortly thereafter died.  Years later, when Carolyn was dying, she gave the iron lady to me.  After Sally died, although I had always been close with Carolyn, something changed and we became best friends.  I have the hardest time defining what that means.  Sister is as close as I can come even though I never had a sister.  When I look at these two photos I see two extraordinary shapes highlighting the best that the other can be.  So for me, that is what sister or best friend means.  If you are lucky enough to have two (or more), you should not have to choose between them. 

As I said, both Sally and Carolyn are gone now.  I have a new best friend and room for many more extraordinarily loving shapes.  I have time to reflect and think about what a best friend is…a definition that exceeds the pre-adolescent playground rules.  I feel very fortunate.

By the way, the statue is 3/4 human size and the flowers are ground orchids.

This photo below moves me the most.  You choose for yourself.

Contrast

Delicate

 This Friday Flower message will probably have very little to do with the flower…or maybe it will.

Last year I was invaded by giant grasshoppers; 6 to 8 inches long, orange, yellow, red…and really pretty.  But they ate all fleshy plants in sight.  I was not emotionally capable of grabbing each one, throwing it to the ground and squishing it (the best advice for loqust invasions).  Instead, I just wished they would go away or eat enough and move on.  Winter came and the hoppers appeared to be gone.  But when warm weather returned, it seems they had laid eggs in every winter resistant, water holding plant in my gardens.  Now instead of a few giant plant destroyers, there were thousands of cute little children.  The lizzards did thier best to eat as many as they could, but it would take thousands of lizzards to stop the upcoming swarm.  Thousands of lizzards do not exist on my acre or even in my neighborhood.  Something in nature had gone incredibly wrong.  There was no longer balance.

I had always trusted nature to take care of balance or homeostasis in my gardens.  I don’t have a sprinkler system or use chemicals, but I was now faced with an incredible imbalance.

For the first time in my life I used a poison to kill the grasshoppers (I don’t count the moth ball fiasco).  I feel horrible and arrogant at the same time, but I also feel I am not willing to sit by while mindless, flesh-eating, pretty creatures devour the most beautiful expressions made by my gardens.  At some point I just had to say “stop it” and mean it.

So what has that got to do with this week’s flower.  Nothing, except it is sitting next to another orchid that had tender leaves and was decimated by the chomping grasshoppers.  I am trying to bring it back to life and I am not going to let the little darlings have another shot at it.  I know this attitude does not help restore balance to my eco-system, but maybe this weekend I’ll spend some quality time searching for a way back to balance.  If you’re in a similar situation, I hope you are able to find and restore balance to your own eco-system.

Have a restful weekend.

always look deeper

My experience with growing things is there always exists the tug between what nature will cause to happen anyway and what my ego believes that I caused to happen.  I grow and create because the alternative is to stagnate and destroy.  Quite simply, the latter depresses me so I grow and create onward and upward.  Sometimes the environment is so difficult that I feel like I am withering.  When I wither I become afraid and when I am in fear I become angry and certainly not growing and creative.  I am blessed that I have been given the gift to notice beauty and that beauty strengthens me.  I am blessed that my noticing leads to capturing, sharing, and sometimes even creating beauty.

Lately, my human environment has become quite hostile to growing and creating.  It has been a struggle to stand in the middle of a battlefield that does not need to be, a struggle to be forced to chose one side or the other when my heart and soul only wants to find beauty, celebrate, and create an even greater environment.

I am not a simple or stupid woman.  I understand politics and understand the human hurt and heart.  But my gift in life has always been to understand the complex and to reduce it to its most simple form; a form that everyone can understand.  This I believe with all of my being: you will never fix, heal, create anything by being vengeful, angry, hurt, blaming, or fearful.  It is only when we can look deep within ourselves and deep within the heart of the other whom we perceive as our enemy that we can find the beauty and heal the wound that stained the beauty.

It doesn't look real because...

 This blue orchid doesn’t look real because in very important ways it is not real.  It is actually a white orchid that has been infused with a “magical” substance that turns it blue, but only for one blooming season.  During the second blooming season it will revert to white.

I first saw it at a big box garden center.  I was all the way over on the far side of the garden center, but the first thought I had, even from that distance, is those can’t be real.  Still, I was drawn to them.  I mean I could not keep away.  I closely inspected every one of the dozen blue orchids, compared them to all of the other variety of orchids surrounding them, and touched them to make sure they weren’t some sort of realistic silk or plastic.  They had all of the characteristics of real orchids, but still I knew in my gut that they were somehow alien, not natural.  I didn’t have my reading glasses with me so I couldn’t read the tag that would have told me about the “magical” substance that made them blue.

Now, I like things natural.  I take plants home and try to find them a spot outside that will meet their needs without much help from me.  I don’t want plants (or other things) in my life that I have to fuss over.  In spite of being certain that these blue orchids were not natural and would probably require some fussing over, I bought one.  Then I went back and bought another.

Sometimes, even when you know you are being tricked, you take the bait.  You take the bait because, if just for a minute, you want to believe that what cannot possibly be possible is possible.