A Good Day: Red Cone Ginger and Brazilian Red Cloak

Like the tulip tree that I wrote about before, this bush is right outside the building where I have Managerial Accounting this semester.  It is Megaskepasma erythrochlamys--I recognized it as a Brazilian Red-Cloak when I took a plant identification class a few years ago  It was blooming when classes started in August--and has continued to produce tall bracts of flowers.  

The bush is thoroughly tropical:  that is, it has huge leaves with flowers that pop bright red against them.  It was blooming when classes started in August--and has continued to produce tall bracts of flowers.

The flower bracts are about 18 inches high.

Spent flowerlettes show these long, white petals in the middle of the shorter red ones.  In the photo below, you can see two pairs of white petals at the base of the bract.

This view shows more of the inner, white pairs of petals all along the length of the flower.

The leaves have a long "drip spout" that keeps the rain from sticking to the surfaces and giving black  sooty mold--yeah, there really is stuff called "black sooty mold" that can coat the surfaces of leaves--preventing exposure to the sun and the process of photosynthesis.

I just spend part of this afternoon outside washing the black stuff off of an avocado tree.  The scale bugs were about done for the year--more than half the leaves were already dead.  I sloughed off the dried leaves, scrubbed the branches and remaining blackened leaves with slightly soapy water until it was gone.  When I first discovered the gardenia tree in my backyard 9 years ago, its leaves were also covered with this black, waxy layer.  I did the same thing then--and the tree is still alive and doing really well.  

Not a technically good photograph, but it gives a feeling of how big the whole plant is.

This afternoon was windy--actually cold until work warmed me up.  I was smart enough to wear gloves so my hands didn't chap . . . and my arms didn't get cut up when I washed off the leaves of the pineapple plants at the base of the tree.  After washing off the mom-plant, I found two babies that I detached and brought indoors.  I washed them off with a toothbrush in the kitchen sink--they are on the front porch waiting for tomorrow so that I can plant them at the base of one of the pine trees in the side yard.  

The leaves are alternating opposite attached to the stem.  When I broke off one to take a photo of the back of it, it came off with a cheerful "pop!"

back of the leaf

A few days after taking pictures of the Brazilian Red-Cloak, I was meeting Brent for lunch and found these Red Cone Ginger plants in the atrium between buildings (at FPL, Juno Beach).  The colours of the two plants are just alike:  the texture of the leaves and flowers are completely different.  The Red-Cloak leaves are soft and tender--the Ginger has stiff, smooth leaves . . . which are long . . . beginning at the base of the plant instead of along a rising stem.

These flowers are completely different from the Red-Cloak, too.  The flower bract opens like a pine cone and, at its base, sprouts off new stalks of flower.  It reminds me of the pineapple plants.  I imagine if I took one of these new flower starts that I could get an entirely new plant.  

base of the flower cone

Flower cone before opening.  Just like a Bird of Paradise, it slips up and out from the protective cover of the leaf stem.  

A mature flower with all of its "babies" also filled out.

Brent and I have been talking about what to do about the house.  His body is slowing down even faster than mine is . . . a fact that he ignores almost as well as I do.  The yard takes time and energy and money.  I have been collecting cool plants, bushes, and trees--which costs.  My initial desire to focus on my traditional favorites (mostly roses, fruit trees) has completely wained.  I now only plant things that would do well here if left alone in the middle of a field.  The avocado trees are beginning to bug me enough that if another one gets sickly, I am ready to simply have Nathan chop it down and Umburto dig out the roots.  I have fig trees that do not give figs, peach trees that do not give peaches, and avocado trees that do not give avocados.

On the brighter side, I have a mulberry bush that is brimming with tender, fuzzy berry starts; a lime tree that has one lime growing on it already and lots of white blooms ready to burst;  a mango tree covered with blooms, a Barbados cherry tree that produces cherries almost all year round.  Our star-fruit tree is a constant producer and the banana trees have cascades of green bananas . . . which will either freeze in a freak cold-snap or all ripen at the same time.  

When Brent was a child, he remembers his dad asking him what he wanted to do when he grew up.  He answered that he wanted to grow bananas--which his dad laughed at and told him would never happen.  Brent's mom corrected him and told Brent that he could do whatever he wanted to do.  He could do anything.

And now he grows bananas.

We have been following Irish Mike's Big, Giant Swords with interest.  He started by creating huge swords for his own pleasure and, this week, was able to pay some of his partners (who do parts of the swords so it can become a viable business) an actual paycheck.  !!!   My dad's own Orabrush business miracle began in a more traditional way--not on YouTube--and also grew into a company that created jobs.  

I wonder what I will do.

Today I worked in the yard (yeah!), went to class (yeah!), paid bills (yeah!), spend time with Nate (yeah!), and wrote in one of my blogs (especially yeah!).  

It has been a good day.

Back Again With an African Tulip Tree

Close-up of the inner flower.

Full-grown tree

These flowers, still attached to the tree, can barely be seen in the photo of the entire tree above.

Front and back of the leaflets.  Below the size and shape are easier to gauge.

 

Making Things Happen: TALK Taylor Swift singing, Irish Mike making swords, Carolyn writing words

It used to be that I wrote about everything . . . in the same way that Taylor Swift writes her songs from her diary, I used to write my life out in my diary.  It helped me to make sense of it or at least it helped me to put it behind me.  Something in my soul misses it terribly, and so I stay up late tonight to compose my thoughts.

Brent James Hendry--my one true life's passion.

My children:  Megan, Lauren and Nathan

The same three, more than a decade later.

I watched a Discovery Channel program--Really Big Swords--about an Irish fellow, calls himself Irish Mike, who loves to create weapons that actually only exist in places like anime serials and movies.  Tonight he created a sword for an American heavy weight athlete--a woman who is one of the top ten strongest people in the world.  He explained that her life must be very lonely--little tiny gymnasts got all sorts of endorsement offers when they won gold medals at the Olympics . . . but this woman had gotten none.  His daughter loved princess make-believe and her father wanted to give her another way of seeing the world--make her aware of other options she had for her life.  He didn't like the fact that princesses were suppose to just sit around and look pretty, instead of making things happen.  

Small detail from chair that I painted and gave to a young girl in Florida--
something I made happen.

I have been fascinated by Taylor Swift for the last few years.  Not only is she beautiful and tall and thin and successful--but she is doing exactly what she has wanted to do since she was old enough to sing Twinkle Twinkle, accompanying herself on a toy piano at 4.  At 11 she sang the national anthem to a stadium of football fans--the next day at school she sat down at lunch and everyone else at the table got up and moved.  Her mother said that she hated to have things like that happen--that she hurt inside when things like happened--to her daughter, but she needed to experience them.  She also, though, gave her daughter a guitar when she was young--and when Taylor wanted to go to Nashville TN--she took her there over Spring Break.  Then her family moved there so that she could apprentice to RCA recording studios when she was 12 . . . 13?

My realm of possibilities was so different from that--not that I didn't get my share of "shunning" and actually cruel bullying during middle and high school--but education was always the mantra that hung about our house.  Dad lost jobs, but then he also got new ones because of his education.  I knew that there were times when we didn't have enough money--but I don't remember ever being on welfare or getting help from the Church because we couldn't pay the rent.  We always lived in homes that we owned--except in Dominican Republic where we rented a large house.  We moved often--an average of about every two years all told--with Dad's jobs.  Never for me or any of my other brothers and sisters--Dad told me that he and mom decided that while us kids were young, that the two of them would forgo lessons or training so that us kids could have the resources to do those things.  But my passions--acting and riding horses weren't considered "real" to my family in the sense that Taylor's singing was.

Peter, Oops, and Roo--three dwarf rabbits that Brent welcomed into the house because he loved me so very much.

Perhaps it is just that I did not have the passion for these things that Taylor did.  When we were in elementary school, Mom always had the three of us:  me, Susan and Martha, singing and performing.  After we sang before the audience, I would continue to sing as I wandered around--hoping that someone would hear me, recognize my talent, and pick me out to become a star.

Kind of like one of Irish Mike's daughter's princesses . . . just waiting around until someone came to save me. 

Watching me watch myself:  through Brent's eyes, I am
always smart and brave and beautiful.

However, there is one thing that I share with Taylor Swift that I hope neither of us every loses:  at various times during her concerts, they show a closeup of her face as she listens to the screaming crowd--loving her and supporting her and wild for her music (which is her).  She has never yet lost that look of amazement and wonder that she could be on stage, doing what she has always wanted to do, in front of people who love having her sing and perform for them.  

Taylor watches her audience as I have watched my own children--with amazement and wonder that such a privilege  could be mine.

My "Blessing" from Argentina.  It cost more to fly her home
from Argentina to Texas than it did to transport our whole
family back when Enron pulled us back to the U.S.

I walk around my yard, through my house, look at photos of my children as they have grown up, see the dedication and love in my husband's eyes as he watches me move about the house--and I am thrilled that I can be in a situation where everything I have every wanted has come true.  I am thin, though short, I have money to spend on travel and gifts (for others and myself) and classes at the local college.  While my father and mother couldn't make my dreams of riding horses or performing before adoring crowds available to me--my husband denied himself hobbies and new cars so that I could ride good horses and he never tires of listening to me sing or watch me perform with his whole, riveted attention.  

Curly--the first horse who was totally mine for a little while.
He taught me what it was to give everything to someone
who gives all they have to you.

During my manic phases, Brent has never blamed me or gotten angry with me--and even when I lost hope in myself and the Lord--he never did.  I am married to a man who has forgiven me my idiotic wrongs against himself simply and thoroughly--without my even needing to ask.  I am constantly amazed at the blessings and adventures that are mine.  There is LITERALLY nothing that I can think of that I want to do that is not possible for me to do when I want to do it.  

My pills are kicking in.   That's another thing that Taylor Swift has, at least never admitted, had a problem with--manic depression, panic attacks, chemical imbalances that screw around with how you see things and what you think they mean.  

I hope that Irish Mike's daughter gets to find all the options she needs to enable her to make decisions that will help her to be happy and honest and sane as she grows up.   I hope that Taylor Swift never becomes jaded and hardened by the money and notoriety that have been heaped upon her.  I hope that I can find just what it is that I want to be when I grow up . . . 56 years old this year, I think I am entitled to consider settling my mind down on some firmer footings than I have yet experienced.