Category: Plants
Sweet Essence of the Magnolia
Billbergia nutans
Gulf Fritillary Caterpillars
The courtyard garden needs cleaning and clearing. The drought offers loads of dropped oak leaves and pine needles.
Passiflora and Pandorea vines growing on the trellises need some care.
When I started to clean and clear the dead bits and the dropped oak leaves and pine needles, I saw a Gulf Fritillary caterpillar.
This morning I found another one.
Late for them to be hanging around the garden. Good that there is plenty fo food for them.
If they make it through the chrysalis process, this is how the will emerge.
The chrysalis of the Gulf Fritillary looks a bit like a dead leaf.
Plan to put the cleaning on hold to give the caterpillars a chance of becoming butterflies.
Converted Egyptian Paste Piece
While reorganizing my garage studio space I found one of my Egyptian Paste test pieces had apparently been used as a hotel for mice.
The mice managed to get in the garage and found all of the dried and drying plant materials sustaining.
When I was cleaning the space after the mice were relocated, it didn’t occur to me that I should look through the boxes of pieces stored in the space.
The box was constructed of hardware cloth and Egyptian paste. After firing the box, it was lined with black nylon and bound closed with strips of the same fabric. The fabric was dipped in diluted wood glue and hit with a heat gun, for a shrink wrap effect. I like that nylon can look like a skin, exposing the structure under it.
I have posted about this piece in the past. Pleased that the pieces have not developed a light coating of sodium.
The pieces were constructed of hardware cloth, some had the addition of nails.
The Egyptian paste was used like spackle and the lot fired to cone 015.
What to do with the mouse house? I am leaning toward popping it someplace, out of the way, in the garden.
Acacia Seed Pods
The interior of the pod is beautiful!
Ladybug Visitor
Ladybug Found Roaming around the Kitchen
Placed it on a potted Brugmansia that is infested with spider mites.
The concave area appears to be a malformation or some type of damage. The ladybug probably came to be in the kitchen after involuntarily hitching a ride on dandelions or kale that was purchased at the Farmers’ Market.
I sharpened the image to show the damaged area a bit better.
Datura Pod
Senecio articulatus Changes and Leaf Growth
Ludisia Flower Buds
When a plant seems to not grow for nearly two years, what could that mean? Loads of stuff.
Wrong potting mix.
Wrong light.
Wrong watering.
…
When I bought the plant at the local Farmers’ Market, I thought the grower told me that the plant is an Impatiens.
Today when I did a google image search, I found that it is a Ludisia, a type of orchid. And that the soil was wrong, light wrong, and watering wrong, feeding wrong. Nice that it survived in spite of my incorrect care. I should have been caring for it like an African Violet.
I repotted it and suddenly it began to grow.
Could all be a coincidence, or maybe it finally had the right growing conditions.
New Growth
Flower Buds
2021 January 3
2021 January 16
2021 February 3
2021 February 24
2021 March 2
2021 April 25
Kew Science–Plants of the World Online, Ludisia
The American Orchid Society, Ludisia