clouds opening to hazy blue: brisk wind: 27ºF

I’ve finished my walk.  I brought ear pads, but now I now I should have taken my gloves.  I also should have picked up that package of pocket Kleenex that I left on the dresser next to my car keys.  Cold hands are warming now and that runny nose has stopped as I sit on the sunniest seat I could find at the café in the botanical garden.  After weeks away this garden, I feel comfortable and reassured to be back.  As I sit here with the sun in my eyes, I think about a question a friend asked me:  “Where is home for you?”  I didn’t have a quick answer then.  Now I know what I should have said.

I was eager to see the poinsettias that the botanical garden chose to display this year.  I knew there would be none of the unnamed reds that I could buy at the supermarkets, and I doubted I would see any of the blue-tinted plants sprinkled with glitter I saw on sale at a WalMart store last week.  I did expect to see ‘Winter Rose’ again though.  ‘Winter Rose’ is a blood-red variety with fist-sized clusters of bracts that curl downward.  Last year there were dozens of them.  This year there were none.  ‘Winter Rose’ must have been the latest in poinsettia fashion last year.  This year though the in-variety is ‘Carousel Red.’  It has bracts that curl and undulate.  Most of the bracts are red, but a scattering of them stay green, except for a tracing of red on their veins.  Why the name “Carousel?”  The breeder, Fischer USA, says that the plant’s curled bracts with its green variations “gives the appearance of motion much like a carousel!” Dorothy, click your heals three times and say over and over, “I see a carousel. I see a carousel. . . .”

The other prominently displayed poinsettia this year is another Fischer USA variety named ‘Sonora Jingle.’  It has pinkish bracts that are at least two hand-spans across.  The bracts are sprinkled with creamy flecks and splotches.  Some bracts that haven’t turned completely red have claimed territories that turn yellow, red, cream, or mottled colors.

A few of the camellias in the Linnaean glasshouse started to bloom in November.  Now though, the spectacular Camellia japonicas have started to flower.  The Japonicas are the mainstays of this house.  By late January, they will fill the house with color.  Japonicas are like tulips, roses, and water lilies for me.  Each of them causes me to take a picture.  I’ll end the year on this solstice day with this fuzzy picture of a peachy-pink, single flowered Camellia japonica named ‘Claudia Lee.’

December is nearly over, yet some of the major spring bulb gardens have yet to be planted.  The pamphlets that were packed with the bulbs I ordered to plant around my house cautioned that I needed to get the bulbs planted before the hard freezes so that they would have a chance to settle in and root.  That time is long past.  This morning the ground is frozen hard and crunchy.  For this botanical garden the spring flower bulb display are akin to the Christmas service at a church.  People who ordinarily stay away will pack both places.  I hope those spring visitors won’t be disappointed.  [A later note:  As I was finishing my walk, I saw a team of six people (three sporting Santa caps) pounding the ground in an unplanted bulb gardens with their trowels.  They were making holes to receive the bulbs that had been loaded on a utility cart parked just behind them.]

The exhibit hall features a model train display.  Flower beds of poinsettias, begonias, mums, kalanchoe, and paperwhites fill in the spaces.  It’s the moving trains that circle the hall in all directions, not the flowers, that bring delight this morning.