A BELATED SOLSICE AND BIG GIVEAWAY

Where to start? A lot of this fall was taken up with adapting a large class to strictly online format. That’s over, but I’ve got to do it again for another class in January. 

Anxiety about the elections, and now the insane aftermath of the elections, has occupied a lot of mental space for me and everyone I know. If n politics this year were a satire, it would be too far-fetched to work effectively. I just hope we can get through the next month without a major crisis of some kind. 

 

Apparently the covid epidemic has greatly increased online shopping, because we’ve had unprecedented numbers of orders for both orchid plants and perfumes. I ran out of boxes for the 100 ml size bottles, and it took over a month for the new batch of boxes to arrive, so shipping of many orders was delayed and I’m still dealing with the backlog. We are running out of small sample vials, and can’t get the usual ones because they’re all being used for covid vaccine. 

The solstice is over, so the days will at least start getting longer, if not warmer. Crocuses and daffodils are starting to come up, and the hellebores are in bud. On Monday we had torrential rain, then on Tuesday it snowed. The Pacific Northwest is the only place I know of where it can snow – and the snow can stick – when the temperature is well above freezing. On Wednesday I finally had to bring inside all of the orchids, tender succulents, and other tropical plants that had been having such a good time outside. Today I’m planting the last of the bulbs that I ordered when they were on sale, hoping that the squirrels and moles don’t eat them all. 

 

I’ve been going through all of my perfumes, eliminating anything that I don't think I need to keep. For that reason, I’m offering a series of big giveaways to all US readers. The items in the giveaways include small samples, larger samples, decants, mini bottles, and a few full-sized bottles. To enter, just leave a comment about your fall. To make up for lost time, up to 5 readers will be winners of this drawing. 

[Photos are mine]

SNOW FOR THE SOLSTICE

When Jasper the cat woke me up this morning, his fur was wet and his nose was cold. It was 7:00 AM and pitch dark outside, except for an eerie glow that came from the white coating that had appeared on the ground during the night. As I sat typing, taking care of e-mail that had arrived overnight, I watched the fluffy snowflakes fall in the light shining from the window and thought about what a perfect scene it was with snow on the shortest day of the year. Eventually the black sky started turning faintly pink in the southeast, and by 8:30 it’s as light as it’s going to get given the dense cloud cover and the low position of the sun. Snow is still falling in huge, clumpy flakes.

I’ve always been fascinated by watching snow fall. Living in a place where a significant amount of snow is unusual, there’s something magical, exotic and romantic about it. I know snow is no fun in a place where it’s a regular occurrence and sticks around more than a few days, but here where we only get a snow accumulation once every few years, it’s a special event.

This gorgeous snow day is the perfect occasion to mark the changing of the seasons and the fact that days will start getting longer soon. Here’s wishing you all a happy winter solstice (or a happy summer  solstice if you’re down under)! 

[I haven't gone outside with my camera yet today, so the snow photo is one taken a few years ago, back when our now-mature palm tree was still young and cute. I like it because it shows the snowflakes falling. The "solstice-flower" photo is one that I took earlier this fall, when the sun was just starting to get lower in the sky.] 

HUMMINGBIRDS IN SIBERIA

For the past week we have been having bitterly cold weather. Everything is frozen solid outside, and all of the plants with green leaves have that sad, beat-up, leathery look that they get when it’s freezing. In fact, they’re a good gauge of temperature because as soon as it warms up they start looking normal again. The air is perfectly still, the sky is perfectly clear and blue, The Olympics are perfectly white, and the sun is doing its best to peek over the southern horizon and shine horizontally on everything for a few hours a day.

The winter solstice is only two weeks away, so it’s not surprising that the days are short. What is surprising is all of the dry, cold weather we're having. Normally it’s cool, cloudy, and wet this time of year, but not freezing! Global climate change seems to have turned the Pacific Northwest into Siberia.

The saddest thing of all was seeing a little female hummingbird early this morning trying to drink at the feeder outside my window and realizing that the sugar-juice was frozen solid. I hope she managed to go up the street and find nectar in some of the winter-blooming flowers in the neighbors’ yards, but I’m afraid they were frozen, too. I brought the feeder in, thawed the liquid, topped it off, and put it outside again hoping the hummingbirds would find it before it freezes again. From now on, until it warms up, I’m going to bring it inside at night.

I hadn’t been in the greenhouse for a week, but did venture in there today to check the temperature and see what, if anything had frozen. Amazingly, a lot of my pleurothallids and other small-flowered orchids have burst into bloom! They must be enjoying the cold a lot more than I am. 

[Photos of Fairbanks, Alaska at noon on the winter solstice and a hummingbird at a red plastic feeder just like mine are both adapted from Wikimedia. Trisitella hoeijeri photo is mine.] 

HAPPY WINTER SOLSTICE - OR THE END OF THE WORLD?

Today is a turning point of some sort. It’s the shortest day of the year, a day when we instinctively light fires and gather with friends to eat, drink, sing, play music, and hope that the sun will do what it’s supposed to do and come back up from its sinking path toward the southern horizon. According to the astronomical charts, it will hang in a limbo of darkness for a few days, with sunrise continuing to come later each day, but sunset also coming later by about the same amount. By Christmas, on December 25, the days start to grow longer by a tiny bit, and by New Years, on January 1, they’re probably enough longer to notice. How nicely the European holidays fit the extreme northern hemisphere seasonal changes!

Given that we’re all alive today and everything seems to be proceeding in its normal fashion, the dire predictions of the end of the world have - once again - not materialized. However, it is a good time to reflect on whether we could, in fact, be entering into a new era. Could today mark the beginning of the destruction of the world as we know it due to the fact that humans have added the final straw that shifts the earth’s ecological balance beyond the point of no return? Each tree that is cut down to make way for a new shopping center is, by itself, of no consequence. Each gram of car exhaust or factory waste released into the atmosphere is, by itself, of no consequence. Each tiny fraction of a pH point by which the ocean is acidified is, by itself, of no consequence. Each species that goes extinct is, by itself, of no consequence. Each human that is born is, by him- or herself, of no consequence. Each event is like a grain of sand. Put all of the grains together, though, and they become overwhelming, a landslide that has the potential to change life as we know it.

Just as each negative act is, in itself, inconsequential, so is each positive act. Planting a tree instead of cutting one down does nothing to stop deforestation; vocally opposing the construction of more strip malls and parking lots and lobbying for efficient urban planning seems like crying in the wind; drinking water from the tap instead of from a disposable plastic bottle seems like a futile economy; walking or taking public transportation whenever you can doesn’t stop global climate change; speaking out for peace, justice, and tolerance seems like a quixotic tilting at the windmill of the military-industrial-power complex; one family limiting reproduction to one child per person won’t stop exponential population growth. Each act by itself is a grain of sand, but if enough of these positive acts accumulate, they have the power to stop the landslide into earth’s destruction by the parasite that is collective humanity.

Maybe we are at the end of one era and the start of a new one. It is up to each of us to decide which scenario it will be. 

[Photos adapted from Wikimedia] 

WINTER SOLSTICE 2011

When you live as far north as I do, the winter solstice becomes an important event. When I got up today, it was still nearly dark, with just a faint pink glow in the sky. There was frost on the ground. It definitely looked like the dead of winter. As I write this, it’s after 10 AM and the sun is still near the horizon, shining almost horizontally through the line of cypress trees at the back of the yard. The sky is bright blue, and I can see the snow-covered Olympics from my window as I write. There will be a few hours of sunshine, then darkness again starting around 4PM.

The orchids in my greenhouse are mostly in lockdown mode, hunkered down trying to get through December with minimal light and warmth. What never ceases to amaze me, though, is that a couple of weeks after the days start to lengthen, the orchids always go into a frenzy of new growth. I’m looking forward to seeing that!

Some orchids choose the winter solstice as a blooming time. I have blooming laelias, dendrobiums, phragmipediums, and phalaenopsis in the house right now, none with a particularly noteworthy fragrance, or rather, none that I haven’t already written about. The big, highly fragrant, winter-blooming cattleyas are in full bud right now, ready to pop open around Christmas day.

When I walk outside, the cyclamens are blooming away, even under their coating of frost. I love cyclamens! They’re my favorite solstice plant. The arbutus bushes, also known as “strawberry trees” are blooming with their little sprays of white, bell-shaped flowers, and the hazelnut trees are covered with catkins. In the Pacific Northwest, the lines between fall, winter, and spring are a little blurred, so that some trees are blooming before others have completely lost their leaves. The biggest cue we have about the changing of the seasons is day length.

This morning I was working on a new batch of Gujarat, which is one of my best-sellers, and my hands still smell like Vanuatu sandalwood. Sandalwood is an excellent scent for the solstice, thick and woody, rich, and slightly sweet, perfect in the cold air outside, and just the thing to enhance the warm, cozy atmosphere of being inside.

My favorite things about the solstice are the feeling of coziness and hibernation during the dark hours, the down time from work and the opportunity to get together with friends and family, and the feeling that the worst days of winter will soon be over and the natural world will come alive again. The symbolism of death and rebirth. Best wishes to all who read this for whatever solstice-related holidays you may celebrate.

[Bridge with sun photo from Wikimedia]

ORCHIDS OF THE SOLSTICE

Oddly enough, the dead of winter is a time when a lot of orchids bloom. I walked into the greenhouse today to see splashes of color all around - a big blue vanda, one of the giants of the greenhouse, an Isabelia pulchella, a creeping miniature that suddenly broke out into a riot of small bright fuschia flowers, several ladyslippers, and Sophronitis cernua, a tiny plant with clusters of bright neon orange-red flowers. All of these orchids are colorful, but none of them are fragrant.

To compensate, though, there are some fragrant cattleya type orchids in bloom too. Laelia anceps is still in full flower, although the fragrance has changed from fruity-floral to more of a pollen-like scent. Brassavola nodosa, one of the parent species of Little Stars, is just coming into its night-fragrant glory.

An odd one is Lc Luminosa, a primary hybrid between Laelia tenebrosa and Cattleya dowiana. It’s a frustrating plant to grow because the cross seems to have produced flowers that are too heavy for their stems. This year there were two growths with flower stalks. The first one to mature was a complete bust. The buds never fully opened because they dragged the stem down, bending it onto the stiff bud sheath, constricting and finally breaking it at that point. I supported the second flower stalk with a stake, and the flowers opened and were OK at first. Now they’re hanging down again from the point at which each flower joins the stalk. While they were in good shape, the flowers were fragrant, very much like the red cattleya described in another post - sweet, spicy, and fruity.

Another orchid that’s blooming now is the Brassolaeliocattleya (Blc) hybrid with a very long name that became the prototype for my perfume, Golden Cattleya, which I’m still working on tweaking, since I can’t decide what to do about the base. More on that next time. For now I'm just thankful that the days will start getting longer.

[Stonehenge image adapted from Wikimedia]