Saturday, January 18, 2014

Country Diary of a Lady: 01/17/2014 8:30 AM



It is Friday once again.  Though the sun s out today, highlighting the frosting that the black spruces and balsam pines received last night.  Cold, crisp, winter.  Tonight we have a large group coming all the way from Zionsville, IN.  They are a great group and will bring with them a great group of cooks to work alongside Janet and myself in the kitchen.  Last year we laughed so much our sides hurt.  Looking forward to that again.

Because I live in my little blue house, which I rent from camp, I cannot have my own garden like I would like.  So I must content myself to pots.  And so I am sitting on our little front porch, admiring the two potted plants I have out here (A Boston Fern that doesn’t look like I’m trying to kill it anymore, and a pot with two different kinds of ivy in it, a traditional and a curly leaf.  I also have a spear-point leaf plant sitting on the kitchen windowsill, but that one is new to me still and quite small as of yet) and glancing over at the two amaryllis bulbs that I am willing to start sprouting.  I brought them inside after allowing them to rest only about a week ago, along with a window box planter of paper whites.  However, none of them have so much as shone a tiny green spike yet.  I am hopeful yet, though.

In our combination dining room, living room the window sill of the large window is covered with my six geraniums and also with a tiny ruffle fern.  So, as you can see, I long to dig my fingers into my own “spot of earth” and plant a garden.  In the summer I have a little plot back behind the kitchen that I try to grow vegetables in.  I managed lettuce and some very small carrots and beets last summer.  I also planted beans over at one of the full-time staff member’s houses, those did very well.

But, quite obviously, I cannot do much more at this time of the year than hope that my amaryllis and paper whites won’t disappoint me.  Because there is such wonder and delight at the sight of that first little green spike pushing its way up through the rich brown soil.  Then to watch the bud heads form and to find yourself wondering how many flowers will appear.  On one of my amaryllis last year I had a total of four separate bud head stalks!  It was amazing and the flowers were strikingly beautiful.

I dearly hope for a repeat this winter.  Partly as it helps to get through those long months between Christmas and Spring.  When you find yourself tiring of the cold, and the snow, and the ice, and constantly having to clean the before mentioned off of your car.  I begin already to long for the warmth of the sun as I sit out on my deck with a good book and a cup of tea (iced perhaps) with my geraniums full of color and big and bushy.  My Ivy crawling across the surface of the deck as though it’s long trailing tendrils had little else to do but cover it in a carpet of green.

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