They'll be here soon

The ruby throated hummingbirds are approaching. They usually get to southern Ohio after the first week in April. Click the title to see their progress.

Dean says he has a few feeders out...he is further south. Mine will go out in about a week I guess.

Unexpected results

Well, I expected the large white moth orchid (see below) to get some recognition. I did get compliments but no ribbons. I didn't make it to the show so I don't know what the competition was like but she came away with only compliments. No trubba.

The bigger surprise was that each of the other 3 I sent to Columbus ribboned (2 seconds and 1 third). Of course if you've ever been to an orchid show, you know there is no shortage of ribbons. I considered those plants to be filler for our society display.

Spring Show at the Krohn

A couple weeks ago, the local orchid society hosted an exhibition and sale. Several societies from the tri-state placed exhibits...there were over 300 plants in about 15 displays. The Krohn collection was well represented too.

Our exhibit was overflowing and in fact, some plants couldn't be fit in. It was amazing.


I shared 4 plants, 3 are in this display and one went to the overflow display.







The plant below is Potinara Hoku Gem 'Freckles.' The flowers open deep reddish orange and lighten over time. By the time the flowers have matured, they are golden yellow. During the show, this plant had the full range of colors.






By the time this finished flowering, the long petals that look like tendrils were about 21" long.

Phrag. 'Tall Tails'









These last two are Phrag. 'Magdeline Rose.'

The color is like a watercolor red. The tone varies a little depending on the light as you can see from the snaps.

Showtime

Yes, I grew it.

I got this phalaenopsis about five years ago on the half-price, half-dead table. You have to agree, she is grateful I took her home with me. Last year, it had 19 flowers on two spikes and I showed it at the spring show at the Krohn. This year, it only has one spike, but more flowers than ever.

Today, it has 20 flowers and 9 buds. It is on the way to Columbus for the Central Ohio show. It's not eligible for any big awards because I don't know it's name or parentage. Who cares?



SLC Vallezac 'Magic Fire' is small and deep red in color. The photo doesn't quite capture the color. I got this division about 1 1/2 years ago. Last summer it bloomed with 2 flowers. This time it bloomed with 4 flowers. I look forward to when the plant grows some more and lives up to its potential.

Dime stores have great plants too!

I grew this one too. I bought it last year at Meijers or Home depot or something. I'm not a snob about my sources...they're all pretty to me. I've learned to be careful though about looking past the flower and checking the health of the plant itself. This one looks pretty healthy.

Biker Babes, 2007

This is our "Biker Babes" riding
with us on our "Great Bicycle Adventure" in 2007.
I've been waiting for a cold snowy day to share it.
It always makes me smile. Hope it warms up your day too.

Chris got a new Bike

I never got Chris a bike when he was a kid. I got him one this year at last. I posted this on his behalf...cuz I think it's great and I don't think he was planning to post! I'm glad he didn't wait until spring to get it. His comments are from the 2 days of pleasant weather we had recently. The good weather is a memory at the moment.

Chris said Milla was jealous but I think she could love it in the right setting.

Chris says:
Took awhile with all the bad weather, but last weekend I was finally able to do some test rides. Yesterday I picked it up, and today I got home a little early to take my first ride. Glad I did cuz the weather today was amazing, relatively speaking. Sounds like tomorrow won't be so good. Thanks so much!!! Can't tell you how excited I've been about getting it. (of course adam has been as well.) It's already custom, I had jim's change out the triple crankset for a double. Tuesday, I should be getting my trainer in the mail so I can still get use of it the rest of the winter.

: ) chris

Florida Training

Well, since it is Antarctica outside at the moment, I thought it would be a good idea to share some of my warm Florida training trip pictures with everyone!

Every year my swim team cuts our Christmas break in half in order to drive down to Florida and swim in the sun. It is not as nice as it sounds... We swim four hours a day, plus running and other torturous dryland activities. It is an exhausting trip, but totally worth every second.

Gotta love those palm trees!


This is my whole team! We made our school's "flying W" in the sand.



This is the hotel pool where we stayed.


And this is the substantially bigger pool where we trained. This is the sprinter group! (Note the distance swimmers still going in the background, hee hee!) I am on the left with the black goggles on.

Christmas leftovers

Some of us wish Christmas could go on and on and on. But then again, when spring comes we can get out and run more.

Dean turns 50

Oldest brother D. Scott holding baby Dean at 10 days old.

Dean always had a knack for that angelic innocent look.











OK, he actually turned 50 a couple days ago but I just found these classic photos of teenage Dean today and I was inspired to rustle up a couple baby ones too. I thought I had given these pics of Dean and Rodney to Dean without making copies.

Happy Birthday once again.

Name the Winks

What a great looking group of cousins with Grandmother RuthAnn. They sure have grown up can you name them? whew. I have to get back with you on that. Sorry Winks...you've grown up too much on me. What happened to all those little kids. I can name a couple and I'm guessing though that it is the oldest, Stephen that is the one who is missing. Like our family, there are only a few boys in this generation so they are easier than the girls.

I have to seek help from Aunt RuthAnn.

Cousins Holiday Dinner

Once again, I treated the young adult cousins to dinner before they all had to return to their grownup lives. What a great group of professionals and students. We had a very nice visit and were stuffed with food.

Kudos to Jamies Grandmother Dennison who coicidentally was dining at the same time at the same restaurant. She stopped by and snapped the photo for us. Jamie got a chance to visit with the Dennisons after dinner.

We ended the dinner with a yummy birthday cake. Happy birthday Annie!

A few photos

December 28th at Dwight's house

A small impromptu birthday celebration for Dean

Visiting with John and Monika via the internet and web cameras

We all got a chance to chat with John.

Family gathering

Sydney has a camera. I think she got it for Christmas.
She took the most pictures by far of anyone tonight as we met at Dwight's house. They were very good too. Maybe she will share them?....

I wanted to visit more than snap photos so I don't have much to share.
It was a good visit too. Thanks family. You all are great.


By the way,
Happy 50th too little brother.
Margaret

HER - SHE

It turns out the kitten is not a HE...those were just fur tufts...

Hersey is a she. HER-SHE. They liked her so much at the vet today that I think I could have left her there and they would have arm-wrestled to see who would get to take her home. Good reports - healthy kitten with just the normal issues. Estimated to be about 12 weeks old. That means she showed up at my house when she was only 3-4 weeks old.

Thankful Family

OK, these are not in the exact order that I expected. But, wellfed restful naps are characteristic of a blessed Thanksgiving.



We gathered the day after in our traditional break from Turkey and leftovers for a family pizza party. We had a pretty good turnout...Thanks for hosting Jay.

We missed Jamie, Mary, Dan, Kyle, Dean and family, and of course Johnika.






The venue provided plenty of entertainment in the form of pool, air hockey, movies, music, and plenty of corners and sofas for conversation or board games.



























Michelle with Grace and Sara.















Scott, Christine, and Robin














The youngest sib and the oldest cuz. The younger brother and older brother they never had. Eventually, they got the movie to play.


















Annie, Julie, and Jane. Anne shared stories of her adventures and challenges in her first teaching job in an urban school. Please keep her in your thoughts and prayers.












Ben has his own adventures. He is looking at an internship in Chicago this year. Sounds like a great opportunity.

















Sorry Dwight...
You were awake all evening.



I didn't get photos of everyone who attended. Others took photos that may be worth posting so stay tuned in case someone decides to put them up...

December blooms

I always get a nice flush of blooms in December.

I get plants I would consider sharing at my club meeting or a show. Of course, it's the holiday season so there are no regular meetings or shows. So I will share here. Please indulge me.


The tropical orange cattleya had no real name tag when I acquired it. It is labeled Bonsai Jim. I like the name and it suggests the history of the plant (it was probably a gift from Jim in the local Bonsai club). It will be more open in a day or two but the color was good and I had my camera out. The flowers are about 5-6" across.


The purple spray of orchids is an Epi Cat.
It is "Viola Susan" or something (another tag mishap). There are about 10 blossoms on this single inflorescence. There is another inflorescence coming on with another 8 blossoms or so.

















This is the one that prompted me to post. Last year, it was a very short yellow spray of flowers. This year, it bloomed orange on a longer inflorescence. I thought the buds were "blasting" (dying on the stem) because of the darker color and I only realized this weekend that it is happy and going gangbusters. The flowers are tiny. What you see here are maybe 30 blossoms on a 4" stem. The individual blossoms are about the size of a pencil eraser (maybe smaller). Pretty cool. Sorry, my camera doesn't get in closer than this. This one is a "species" and has a definate name: Liparis grossa.

Orchids are fun and not that difficult to grow.

Hersey

Hersey is adapting well and generally is being a gentleman. His new favorite perch is next to the goldfish aquarium.


He's still a cute kitten...so the snaps are just for fun. Don't worry, it won't be long before he is just hairy, sleepy, and uninteresting.

Windfall

Remember the hurricane that roared through town
in September? A buddy of mine was helping clear some
fallen trees and asked if I wanted some black cherry.
"Are you kidding? Of course I do!"

The fallen tree yielded four logs about eight feet long.
We painted the ends to prevent splitting.

Add one bandsaw mill and the fun begins.

First cut on the first log.

Making lumber. This was quite
an operation to watch.

The lumber has to dry for at least a year

before we can use any of it.
Four wheelbarrows of sawdust later,
400 board feet of black cherry. Yippee!!

Hersey finds a home

OK, I didn't want another cat.
My prior cat (Kiki) got hit by a car last winter and I had kind of gotten used to not messing with taking care of a pet.

But I had never seen a kitten on his own that was this young before. He could have fit in the palm of one had and he still had baby blue just-opened eyes when I first heard him mewing under my deck. In these pictures, I've already been feeding him a couple weeks, so he is just now about weaning size.

He seems to be pretty well adjusted for one abandoned so young. I've just starting introducing him to the house and he has pretty good manners so far.

I've never seen a cat with this coloring. He has dark face, feet and tail, On his body, he has very dark undercoat...like chestnut but he has a bit of a white overcoat. In a horse, this color is described as Roan. I considered that for a name but Olivia helped me come up with some much better options. Some were just silly but most of the names had a coffee theme.

"DeCaff", "Starbuck", "Latte", and others. I settled on "Hersey-Mocha-Latte" with Hersey for short.

Now if any of you need or want a kitten, I could let him go. I'll break him in and have some fun with him for now, but, like I said, I really didn't want a cat.



But he seems to have found me.

Pentawards

I have to brag about Christopher.
As most of you know, he works for a big graphic design firm downtown. They follow a team approach but Chris has had primary responsibility in the last four years for packaging and labeling of P&G's Vicks product line (Vicks, Dayquil, Nyquil, etc).

His company recently won an award for the Vicks labeling and packaging.
Congratulations Chris!!

Check it out by clicking the title above. Scroll towards the bottom of the webpage.