Previous post on Fall Harvest; this post on southwestern Christmas succulents. There was something about this composition of bromeliad and cactus and jalapeno shaped lights that called out to me. Perhaps, like most of my favorite photographs, the subject evokes childhood memories (Click here for: Old Smokey ). Case in point, my parents like to grow these two species. My mom managed to grow a cactus at least seven feet tall over several decades. Even when we moved cross-town in the bi-centennial year, the cactus came with us. It was rigged to their deck by twine to keep it vertical. I will have to re-check its status next time convenient.
The bromeliad reminds me of visits to my dad's office where my brothers and I enjoyed leaving cryptic messages on his blackboard (or was it a whiteboard?). We also enjoyed spinning round and round in my dad's executive chair, making it increase and decrease in height with the dizzying revolutions. I wonder if it ever fell apart on Monday morning, as my dad returned to the workaday work world? My dad grew bromeliads in terra-cotta pots on his window ledge just beneath the off-white, oft-dusty venetian blinds; we also enjoyed "adjusting" these blinds, usually with off-kilter results (sorry, dad!). After months of benign neglect, the pots would return home for some plant doctoring by the true green thumb of the family, my mom. She has a talent for resurrecting blooms from twigs. Their perennial orchid odyssey is a subject for another photo-study and Modern Suburbanite musing...
Here is a simple composition of acid Christmas colors. Notice, fair reader, the round leaves with not eight, but nine segments. Digging that asymmetry.
Musingly,
The ModSub
PS-- Here's a shot of the famed 7+ foot cactus sans life-support:
5 comments:
9 segments--how very un-Fibonacci!
Wow-- Fibonacci! Let's see, that's 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21... yup-- 9 not part of set. A natural peculiarity in this bloom...
thx.. the ModSub
ed. note: from jck
I remember you leaving hidden messages. I remember there was writings on the board, but to this date, I have no clue as to what was sent.
But I do remember my spiral chair, turned to the last pitch (?!).
Speaking of Mom's cactus, she has been supporting the cactus with strings to the deck post in the backyard. She will not let it collapse.
Glad to hear that the cactus lives!
The Modern Suburbanite
Revised post; see end of this post for new photograph!
The ModSub
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