Crown of Thorns

Well, look at what I stumbled upon at a place of business today! There were two of these and I could not resist taking pictures!!! Don't you love how they snake all out of these rectangular concrete planters???

I have been having such crazy days at work and home, that I actually considered (at a very weak moment) deleting a few things from my daily schedule and the two that would be cut first were going to be my garden and the blog!!! I knew I had better sit on these ideas a while...and I did. There will be no blog deleting...and thanks to my Mom who comes over daily (sometimes twice daily) to water my garden...it gets to stay too!

To quote a nun who I used to work with (she was Vietnamese)..."That's life" (Pronounced more by her like "That's Ryfe")...I guess it will just keep going on whether or not I can keep up with it...and I just have to keep trying!

Cheers to all of you! I have tomorrow (Friday) off, and will finally take my dog for a toenail cut. I have been negligent, and should be beaten! Poor Dooze...

Interesting info on the hybrid Thai Crown of Thorns

I was sitting here this morning before heading out to work, reading my July-August Cactus and Succulent Journal, and I came across an article with information about the hybrid Euphorbia Milii, sometimes referred to as a Thai Crown of Thorns. The flowers are larger on these. It's funny, but when I bought my recent plant at Home Depot, I only thought "Wow, this is so beautiful", not even realizing how large the flowers were, until Aiyana mentioned it! I'm a little slow. I didn't even stop to say, "Hey, I'm not normally attracted to those thorny, thin stalked, tiny flowered buggers, but hey...look at this cool one"!!! LOL.
Anyway, today at Wanapluk, I found out a little more information! Click on their name to read the article!

While the cats away, I'm supposed to sleep????? NO!

Here I am just a few days home from vacation and I am just wanting to be a bum! Sleeping a lot, like I have some strange form of sleeping sickness. I have all these ideas for actually planting things out in the brutal heat, and then I say, "Oh, forget about it"! I am really looking forward to fall when we can actually go outside and ENJOY it! LOL. I have come to realize how much I like white flowers with a bright red, orange or pink with it! This picture demonstrates how absolutely stunning the combination can be! I found these planted outside our hotel in Tipton, Ga., and had to take a picture. I think Tootsie will really love these, for some reason, as well as most all the rest of you fellow bloggers!!! Tootsie is a flower girl though, and her blog shows that. I have never been much of a flower person, but I have to admit that if the plants that produce the flowers do not need ME to keep them alive, I feel I can manage to have a few flowers! The thing that has made this clear to me is the fact that I sat that pot of white blooming crown of thorns next to 2 very bright and colorful moon cactus outside in my screenroom, where I see them everytime I look out there...and I realized I REALLY LIKED THE WHITE NEXT TO THE COLOR.


My thoughts started racing to how could I get this outside without the use of water. Well...I mentioned it to my Mom (the sheer genius, truthfully, she is)...and she said, "Well, I have some white periwinkles you can have"! I looked outside along my fence which is lined with all green bushes, and envisioned the white periwinkles and in front some red and pink crown of thorns! I LOVE this idea. BUT...do you think I can get out there and do the work in this heat? Maybe in the evening I can. I do want to have something to show when my husband returns from visiting his family in Shreveport, LA. He is gone a week, and while the cats away, I am supposed to play...but all I want to do is sit in air conditioning!!! This is sad. All I can think is that I must be getting to old to hardly function anymore! LOL.

Succulent color!

I went over to Moms for the first time today after getting home from our little trip, and found this large pot of portulaca, or purslane in full bloom, and just mounded up so gorgeously! The flowers grow at the ends of the stems. and they come in an array of bright, beautiful colors; purple, scarlet, yellow and pink are just a few. There are both single- and double-flowered varieties. I stole a picture when Mom wasn't looking! LOL. I love this hot pink variety of bloom.

AND...I had forgotten all about this Crown of Thorns, or Euphorbia milii I bought the day before I left...which I found still covered with these pretty white-green flowers. I really like this color just because it is so odd to see (I think) as opposed to the red or pink blooms. E. milii has flowers that are small, subtended by a pair of conspicuous petal-like bracts, variably red, pink or white, up to 12 mm wide.
What are your favorite colors?

And I leave you with these beautiful words and thoughts:

"Who can estimate the elevating and refining influences and moral value
of flowers with all their graceful forms, bewitching shades and combinations
of colors and exquisitely varied perfumes? These silent influences are
unconsciously felt even by those who do not appreciate them consciously
and thus with better and still better fruits, nuts, grains, vegetables and
flowers, will the earth be transformed, man's thought refined, and turned
from the base destructive forces into nobler production. One which will
lift him to high planes of action toward the happy day when the Creator
of all this beautiful work is more acknowledged and loved, and where man
shall offer his brother man, not bullets and bayonets, but richer grains,
better fruit and fairer flowers from the bounty of this earth."

- Father George Schoener (1864 -1941)