eLPy's Blog, page 19
April 19, 2014
A New Day – 66 – Zygopetalum Rhein Moonlight in Bud
A New Day – 66 – Zygopetalum Rhein Moonlight in Bud Today’s image is another round of orchid anticipation! This particular plant is identified as stated above. From what I’ve soon in sample pictures its flower should be a very beautiful and interesting specimen. Unfortunately the post office sort of lost this plant for […]
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April 18, 2014
A New Day – 65 – Wils. ‘Peach Cobbler’ in Bloom
A New Day – 65 – Wils. ‘Peach Cobbler’ in Bloom At last I have some pics of Wilsonara Pacific Passage ‘Peach Cobbler’ from Day – 59. The flowers started opening last weekend but I wanted to wait to take a pic for some more beautiful flowers. They’re about an inch or so and […]
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April 15, 2014
A New Day – 64 – New Orchid Collection
A New Day – 64 - New Orchid Collection Today’s pics are of the new Orchids I’ve added to my collection from Hausermann’s greenhouse.
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April 14, 2014
A New Day – 63 – A Beautiful, Unwanted Return
A New Day – 63 – A Beautiful, Unwanted Return Tonight, it happened. It was cloudy & cold, temperature dropping by the hour. It was raining, and drizzling, and doing whatever else precipitation feels like doing. And then…it was snowing. But who am I kidding, this isn’t the first time in my life that 70-80 degree […]
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April 13, 2014
A New Day – 62 – More from Hausermann’s
A New Day – 62 – More from Hausermann’s There were two Orchids that I left behind, that you’ll see in a later post, so I went back to Hausermann’s today just before they closed. Today’s pics are of a few specimens that I found particularly interesting, even if they didn’t follow me home. […]
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April 12, 2014
A New Day – 61 – Hausermann’s Orchid Greenhouse
A New Day – 61 – Hausermann’s Orchid Greenhouse Today was my first visit to an Orchid greenhouse, it was pretty spectacular. They had an impressive number of plants and variety of species and hybrids at that. There were so many plants in fact that the isles in between the rows were so narrow […]
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April 10, 2014
A New Day – 60 – Chipping Sparrow
As you may know by now this year I’m trying to get back on the birding track a little more. This means I’ve been paying more attention to what birds are actually visiting my yard. As I said in a previous post – Day 57 - I didn’t think for a while that I had much more than House Sparrows. My neighbors have half dozen bird houses along the side of their garage by my fence that are all inhabited by these little guys; they seem to dominate. I have one of this feeders that sits under a sort of helmet if you will and the “bar” that the birds sit on to feed drops down and covers the food when something heavy lands on it. Birds can only feed from this one side & the whole point of its construction is to deter squirrels, which works well enough, but it also doesn’t encourage many other birds to stop by. So I got another one of those cheap plastic hexagonal feeders and hung it from a pole that I have attached to the pole the other one is on (the brand has “extra branches” that sort of snap onto the pole and stick out horizontally). With this feeder the birds can feed all around.it. Within a couple of days Blue Jays were visiting more, as well as Cardinals (instead of just eating off the ground) but my greatest increase was in rather common birds that weren’t so common to my feeder: White-breasted Nuthatches & Black-capped Chickadees.
As you an see, and if you didn’t already know, one good way to attract more birds and more variety is to offer different types of feeders. This year I plan as well to set up a different station in addition to this, that way the House Sparrows can dominate around their “houses” as much as they want plus the more shy birds will be a little farther from the house. This will also enable me to use different kinds of food, which will affect the variety. That’s another thing I did with this new feeder, I added dried mealworms to the feed mix and threw some handfuls around the area. There were some fans no doubt, one being the Nuthatch.
So far this year at my feeder and the surrounding area I’ve seen: Cardinals, Blue Jays, Black-capped Chickadees, White-breasted Nuthatches, Brown-headed Cowbirds, Mourning Doves, Gold Finches (Yeah, I didn’t think they came over my way as I haven’t seen much of them in the yard!), & today the Chipping Sparrow. I was so excited about this brown little bird with the rusty cap (often confused with the American Tree Sparrow and Field Sparrow), I knew it was something I hadn’t actually identified before. So I snapped a few pics before it took off and ran inside to my guide. After identifying it over the other Field Sparrow because of the extra color bar (that’s what I’m calling it) I happily rested back and said “Check, Chipping Sparrow”. So now I want to figure out what to plant to attract more birds and how to put my 2nd feeding station together.
(Sorry it’s pretty blurry, I was in a hurry and couldn’t get too close before it took off, so I’m going with what image I have that shows its markings best.)
My first officially identified Chipping Sparrow in my backyard.
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April 9, 2014
A New Day – 59 – Orchid Wils. ‘Peach Cobbler’
Today’s image is of the buds of one of my new Orchids. Wilsonara is a hybrid of the Oncidium Alliance; its full ID is Wilsonara Pacific Passage ‘Peach Cobbler’, the last being its hybrid name. It’s a rather large plant, at least in terms of all my other Orchids. Its leaves are probably over 18″ tall & its spike (the stem the flowers grow off) is taller. Of course I’ll post when the blooms are open. But here’s a few macro teases!
[image error]Little Face Publications.
April 8, 2014
A New Day – 58 – Woodland Wonders
What are you looking at> Find another pond.
These little guys – see how it compares to the Maple leaves? – I heard from almost a quarter of a mile away. You ever hear those loud, higher pitched frog songs somewhere off in the woods, like a chirping chorus. You an hear them during the day or at night. Well, that’s these guys. Pretty incredible right? Can’t really say you’re too surprised, I mean in 58 days there has been plenty of evidence of just how incredible nature is. Doesn’t make it any less awesome to witness it again and again though! Check out some of Bella Remy’s Photography documenting her trip through the Galapagos!
Yeah, it’s comfortable.
It’s no wonder then why so many poets have found inspiration in Nature. Of course I have myself, many of my poems were inspired by just being outside swirling in a deluge of emotions, sometimes pertaining to the natural world most times having to do with the human world!
Amidst the land of Rootidom…
If you’ve happened to pick up a copy of my book and read even some of it already then you may already know of some fo the following poems. Or you can even read a few of them here, just a couple of days ago I wrote a new one – So Lucky - for National Poetry Month (I’ve written about 6 new ones so far for NaPoMo). (Oh and I’ll be adding another one or two from my book That Which Lives Within before the month is up as well. Don’t you love samples!)
The poem Faith is literal in that I was sitting out in the sun out in the country & on a pallet of landscaping bricks. I was sitting with my dog when a Red-tailed Hawk came into view flying up high but nearby. Winter Strong was also written out in the country, from the warmth of my car mind you. I had just drove down a long snowy road and an even snowier driveway when I came to a stop I immediately took notice of the evergreens all around me. (I’ve long been fascinated with just how much life is still active in the winter, just when you think it’s not.) My thought process at that moment turned into this creative fire and I saw all that was strong and present about winter. In these ways, poetry becomes a record of our interpretations of any given moment. I’ve written poems inspired by Orchids (before I became obsessed with them, actually that was sort of the beginning) and my interpretation (or one of) of them. So Lucky is drawn from the inspiration of flowers, their diversity and overwhelming presence. Disguised by Blue Skies was created while I walked in a 3 mile circle one day admiring the ever-changing shapes of clouds above me. I made sure to recite the new lines from starting from the beginning so I could remember it all and write it down when I got home. These are just a few. Sometimes my environment draws the words out of me like venom & helps me put my thoughts together.
Vibrant vines create their own spaces
These are just some of the way, and of one poet, that Nature creates poetry beyond the poetry that it is.
Dynamic Reflections in perspective
Behold the buds of the lilac bush! I moved this guy using a bobcat after I almost killed it. Four some-odd years later it lives!
Amidst the frogs & living things, dead things float…
Stay tuned, I’ll have some more poems from my first book as well as some interviews with poets. Names will be revealed soon. Oh and don’t forget my book is on sale!
Happy National Poetry Month to you!
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April 6, 2014
A New Day – 57 – A Few Blooms
What better way to celebrate spring – again and again – but with some more blooms, inside & out! I showed you Crocuses growing through the snow, showed you them all wrapped up in their beauty, sprinkled with rain drops, & now let me show you one of them smiling to the world! Well done Crocus! Flowers are nature’s poetry.
Here’s one of the two Crocus varieties I have growing.
So Lucky
We should be so lucky
in all our ugliness
that the life we live is blessed with beauty
we needn’t strive for at all.
We should be so lucky
that without a finger lifted
outside, all around us,
It is beautiful.
We should be so lucky
that God ever entrusted us
to lay a finger on such marvels
and they not wither away.
We should be so lucky,
and so we are.
So go, go and SEE
a flower.
-by eLPy
Paphiopedilum ‘Pink Fred’ multifloral, 2 open, 2 to go
Oh, but of course I must add a bird to this post. Not a favorite but I’m documenting what birds I’m getting in my yard as I thought all I got were House Sparrows, so I’m going to share today the Brown-headed Cowbird, male & female. The females of this species are known to lay their eggs in the nests of other birds. Their babies will then be raised by this other bird. I believe they are also known to push the other babies/eggs out of the nest. Aside from that the males bodies are black & iridescent with brown heads. It’s common in birds for the female to be the more drab species not only to disguise them on the nest but it’s the males who have to woo the female so they have to be impressive. (Oh and the little bird is a House Sparrow, very common but also I believe they’re originally non-natives coming from Europe I believe…)
Male on the left, female on the right.
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