Mid-Atlantic Gardening: Your Neck of the Woods 2015 Part 6

eeeegads!
and that's before 9/11

There are restricted areas in the air too. Mark has found out they are quite serious about those. No cutting corners. Go around. You do NOT want ground to say Go see FAA when you land hahahaha

A friend of ours, a slight, bespectacled librarian, accidentally turned into the entrance of the CIA in McLean. Out of nowhere she was surrounded by men with serious firepower. Her car was thoroughly inspected inside, out, and under. Very intense experience for her.

Yikes!!

Sycamore leaves from our walk today.
Horrid new poinsettia from shopping today. Makes the blue dyed orchid look good.

Yikes is right......Those Poinsettias are hideous.
WOW look at the size of those leaves

Wow, those poinsettias look terrible. Like children went to town with the water paint. Big leaves indeed. If they were still green they'd make a good tissue or toilet paper if you were in a pinch.

Wow, look at those sycamore leaves!

The poinsettia look diseased. The traditional red and white are so pretty!

The sycamore was a young'un, maybe 20 feet tall.
also on that walk, we were under a final approach for BWI. We heard some really cool wake turbulence/wingtip vortex sounds
Wiki: " wake turbulence sound is easily perceived as originating a considerable distance behind the aircraft, its apparent source moving across the sky just as the aircraft did. It can persist for 30 seconds or more, continually changing timbre, sometimes with swishing and cracking notes, until it finally dies away." Like there's an invisible thing flying across.
And a Chinook passed over yesterday. Thpe huge rey choppers with two rotors. We make the most of living near the airport and Northrup Grumman, where military jets sometimes fly for the radar systems.

What a beautiful chilly morning.

I'm with ssg - my first thought on those poinsettias is that they looked diseased.

OMG!!!!! What will they think of next? These Poinsettias look disgusting!
How could any grower consider these marketable? Maybe it was just an experiment?
Hope we don't get them in at the HD.

I'll try to get a picture of these from your post--no matter how many steps it will take--
and show it to the Bell Nursery lady.

***Christmas trees come in on the 18th--whoopie! G.

EEEWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!! Those poinsettias are horrid!!!! Did I say EEWWW?!

I could see a designer using them in certain arrangements for effect, but nothing related to the holidays or poinsettias. Maybe more for Festival/ Mardi Gras or some artsy gala. We don't think of poinsettias as being tropicals. but they definitely look it. Wanna' bet we see them in Philly this year, possibly used as just that, tropicals.

Re: Designer Poinsettias.
A little over ten tears ago, a company (Glockner) developed a method and products for painting/dying plant material. At the same time, the poinsettia industry found its sales flat and its position of 'everyone's must have plant for the Holidays' slipping in popularity and trending towards other decor as promoted in magazines like "Martha Stewart Living' etc. So deep blu, deep burgandy,apricot, gold and silver flecked and confetti and tyedyed (as Sally has pictured above) poinsettias began to be introduced in various markets and at higher prices.

IMHO the poinsettias Sally showed are rather poor looking to begin with

I wondered if they took some lackluster, substandard poinsettias and tried to salvage them.
Homestead, coleup, has had the glitter dusted ones. Ew!

coleup, the designers may like the asymmetrical shape. Who knows??? After all they are designers. I thought that the plants looked healthy enough, just weird by by standard/taste.
Used in ikebana this could create the feeling for the display, flora used, and intended feeling.
I love contemporary design (I just can't quite feel it though), and usually opt for a more naturalist conventional design. That must be an indicator of my limited imagination.
Most of my design training was commercial work (traditional), but one of the labs I set up as a TA was floral, and if I had the time I could and would sit-in. I really learned a lot there, I just wish I had more time to examine where it could lead me.

OMG!!!!!!! I just saw the poinsettias!!!! They look dizeeeeeezed!!!! Yuck!!!! Desicration of nature! I know Pomona is writhing and rending her clothes. This ranks right up there with the maniac that took the hammer to the Pieta! Not quite to the level of child or animal abuse but close.

Hey Ye, Hey Ye. The photo contest at ATP is open.
http://allthingsplants.com/apps/photocontest/view/3/

Ric, I looked at it last year and there were quite a few "same postings" from out Photo
Contest. Many that won with their photos here on DG--just posted the same photos
on ATP. Why nit? sure thing--

I did not like that.......Then--what does it matter? G.

Hm. I just compared a few categories from last year and there were no shared winners between ATP and DG. I prefer the user interface over at ATP so I'll be posting some of my pictures there. I doubt I could win any category, though. The winners on both sites have fantastic pictures! They look like professional stock photos.

Both Ric and I are entering the ATP Photo Contest, not sure we really have winners but we both have some nice pics. Somehow we missed the DG contest and didn't get anything entered in that one. I did take 1st and 3rd in a smaller ATP's Photo Contest for Caladium pictures that was sponsored by Bill at Caladiumbulbs4less.com. and won $125 in free Caladium bulbs Boy that was great.

Holy cow, Holly, that is a lot of nice caladiums!

SS-
I did not imply that there were "shared winners"--what I noticed was that
many of the pictured entered on ATP by people from DG--were pictures
that had won 1st or 2nd-or 3rd--or honorable mention here.

Kind of--an incentive to submit the same pictures again. That's all....

G.

Yes it was I got $100 for the first place and $25 for the 3rd place all complements of Bill.

I don't think I'll be doing much for a couple of days. I somehow picked up a particularly nasty stomach virus. JR visited after all. I haven't been that sick in a long while. Hopefully I'm on the mend.

Oh no Ric. Get better soon!

Hope you feel better soon, Ric! Stomach bugs can get pretty serious when they last longer than 24 hours.

I'm hopeful that grits qualifies as part of a BRAT diet. LOL I've had my grits and now I'm eating my applesauce laced with cinnamon. Next up maybe Hibiscus tea with orange blossom honey and ginger.

OH, sooo sorry it hit you. NO fun!

adding my sympathies. Around this 'neck' (my workplace) there are lots of sniffley heads and scratchy throats

Sniffles going around here, too, but thankfully no tummy bugs -- they are the worst! Hope you're recovering quickly, Ric.

Sally, I loved the article today on the hickory syrup. I got some at the Lucketts Fair one year. I liked to use it on salmon, but I checked out the website you mentioned in the article and saw lots of other recipe ideas. I'm not sure if the syrup I got at the Fair was made by the same people or not, but it sounds like they have the market on making it, so maybe it was. I may go ahead and order another bottle. Your article was originally published several years ago, but I must have missed it back then.

Ric, are you feeling better?

Pretty good this AM, thankfully. I almost thought my vertigo was back.

NOOOOO, on the vertigo. Hoping you are feeling better

Glad you're perking up Ric.

Guess what? I wrapped some Xmas presents tonight!
Feeling pretty with it for once. But how much you want to bet I still mail the box last minute and Priority, lol?

Ric, I hope you feel better!
On my last flight back from South Carolina, I was sitting between 2 sniffling/coughing people. I really hope I don't get whatever they had.

Sally, maybe Mark should mail them since you wrapped them; what do you think?

Well, yes, he'll be my mailman when I'm ready. But I have to close the box. And I am not quite done.
I got the book 'Call the Midwife' for MIL, I think she'll like it.

A church made from living trees, and more
http://treechurch.co.nz/

How cool!

Yes!

You have room for one of those, Terri. Go for it!

Very cool! I might consider going to that church! :-D