Some orchids, brought inside for the winter. These two happen to belong to my youngest daughter, but I have been running an orchid rescue here, so there are more. I'd been given orchids on a couple of gift-giving occasions and discovered that I liked them (which mostly means that I didn't kill them, and then they actually bloomed again, so I felt like a genius). Then when my mother was sick last year, and I was bringing in her plants from the porch for her as the weather was getting cold, we realized that she had more orchids than she had places to put them in the house. "Oh, just throw those out," she said. I brought them home instead, and these are two of them. I guess you could say my daughter was fostering them in her room, until she went to college, and now here they are, in my line of vision, so I won't forget to drip water on them occasionally. My mother puts an ice cube in each of her orchid pots once a week; I just try to approximate that amount of water at that interval.
We're going to lay mulch in the stump-garden area today, which will more or less finish off that project until the time comes to plant more berries. Otherwise, it's chilly and gloomy, and I'm going to read a lot and drink tea. I'm wearing joggers, which I've been waiting to put on until a) the end of my 100-day dress challenge, and b) colder weather, both of which have now occurred. This is a thrifted pair I bought last year because I loved the color –– I still do love the color.
The rise is kind of low, which is my least favorite thing about them and more or less necessitates wearing a long top with them. Here I'm wearing an old "shark-bite-hem" tunic, and the Birks-with-socks thing that signals the coming of winter in my house. I'll put on sneakers or something to go do the mulch, but for now I'm warm and comfortable. Haven't bothered much with my hair, but will probably put it up in a ponytail or bun to work outside.
Again, more than anything else, this is comfortable, but I do like the colors together. This is the first Saturday since mid-July when I haven't gotten up and put on a dress –– the same dress. So it feels a little weird. But I had been missing things like this, and it's nice to be reacquainted with them.
LATER:
But I got over missing them pretty fast.
Did yardwork, took a bath, and put on . . .
Alors! Encore! La Camille! Avec les leggings en bambou, acheté d'Ebay, et le cardigan Loft, acheté de la boutique de la Bonne Volunté.
We spread pine-needle mulch in the big garden area:
I filled three more grow bags with dirt:
I'm thinking I might plant some spring bulbs in those bags, then just dig them up and replant them once they're done blooming, to make room for summer vegetables.
We still have plenty of room for more containers of various kinds and sizes, as well as more berries along the fence. Eventually there will be a section of fence between the end of this area and that forsythia, too, which will mean another place to grow something vining or otherwise in need of a trellis.
I also whacked back and yanked out a great deal of vinca jungle around the front porch, uncovering an entire garden hose whose existence I had forgotten.
Really I'm just growing these beet greens because they're so pretty:
