Home & Garden

The server update from yesterday is complete and we’re now back to full capacity. We now have unlimited bandwidth and storage with only a very large limit on the number of objects (files, images, videos). We should have plenty of room for years to come.

So with that out of the way, here’s one of the flower pictures that Damsel took this morning. This is a mum in a bouquet that she got on Friday. The light is indirect mid-morning sunshine from the staircase window above. Click the image for full-sized.

Otherwise known as “Orchid Cactus,” this epiphyllum flower is of the “Frühlingsgold” (Spring gold) variety. Light yellow inner petals and darker yellow outer petals that started out red. There will be several more on this plant before spring ends. We hope to have some red and white epiphyllum flowers later this spring.

Click on the image to enlarge.

These are in my Mom’s garden. This bromeliad currently has clusters of these unusual multi-colored flowers hanging from stalks. I don’t know the proper or nickname for this variety, but it sure is pretty. Click image to enlarge.

According to Wikipedia:

Bromeliads are one of the more recent plant groups to have emerged, presumed to have evolved at the close of the Cretaceous, over 65 million years ago. Fossilized bromeliads have been dated back to roughly 30 million years ago. The greatest number of primitive species reside in the Andean highlands of South America suggesting a beginning there. The west African species Pitcairnia feliciana is the only bromeliad not endemic to the Americas, and is thought to have reached Africa via long-distance dispersal approximately 12 million years ago.

Our Bishop’s Hat Cactus has its first spring flowers. I took this picture of the flowers this afternoon. Click for large image.

Click here to see why it’s called “Bishop’s Hat.”