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| The morning sun lights up these glorious amaryllis blooms. |
As I walk through the house on this very frosty morning, I'm thankful. Walking from the kitchen, I cast my eyes over to the dining room window where the sun lights up one of my tall amaryllis plants with its huge red blooms. I walk down the hallway to the living room where I am flanked by tables filled with special little gifts I've saved from loved ones, antiques that were handed down to me by my parents and grandparents and some things that I have made with my own two hands. The ice crystals formed on the living room windows remind me of cold mornings on our farm.
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| Ice crystals on the living room window. It was 12 degrees this morning! |
When I was a little girl, I used to stare out the window over the kitchen sink, with its pattern of ice crystals, to watch for the the little yellow dot to the west that was the school bus approaching from up the road. My father would often look over my shoulder at the snow-covered fields and recite the lines from a poem that he learned as a boy in the one-room school house he attended.
The snow had begun in the gloaming,
And busily all the night
Had been heaping field and highway
With a silence deep and white.
-- Excerpted from
"The First Snowfall"
by James Russell Lowell
If I close my eyes, I can picture the image of us together at the window and hear his voice. I was safe and warm and loved. That is how I feel this morning and I am thankful. I wrap my hands around my warm coffee cup and consider all that I have in my life for which I am grateful.
If you are interested in reading the poem in its entirety, and about the author, here are a couple sites to look at online. As with any research, I often fall down a rabbit hole, and finding this poem was no exception. It gave me insight into its true meaning and also how my father may have related to it as an adult. What I had always considered in my mind that is full of romantic notions was that it was about the beauty of the snow, but it has much more meaning. Read on, my friends . . .
https://poets.org/poem/first-snowfall
https://prezi.com/xwxjq1qmlibc/the-first-snowfall/
Back to my amaryllis, or is it amarylli? For more rabbit hole fun, you might want to jump in here to read up on pluralizing a genus name:
https://www.courier-tribune.com/article/20131211/NEWS/312119820
While watching one of my favorite YouTube channels, I noticed the host had cut her amaryllis blooms and placed them in a vase on a window sill. I was fascinated by the image and I jumped down one of those rabbit holes again. I hopped from site to site garnering all kinds of information about amaryllises . . . another way to pluralize the word to take up precious space in my brain. This time, I took the plunge and used the information and (gasp here) I cut the long heavy stalks of my potted and overcrowded amaryllises and put them in vases. From what I read, this will give the cut flowers a longer bloom time than left in the pot, provided I cut them before they have fully opened. A little floral preservative (the kind you get with cut flowers at the grocery store) helps them stay fresh a bit longer. I always have a few packs at the bottom of my kitchen junk drawer.
Some photos of the cut blooms are below. I am glad I stumbled over this information because I can enjoy the vases of flowers throughout the house and I don't need to constantly stake the heavy flower stalks with dowels and pipecleaners. I have given myself permission to cut my own flowers.
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| These blooms were cut at just the right time. They have emerged as a spectacular sight. |
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| These were mis-labeled on the box as red. However, their delicate white with pink flowers are a delightful surprise. |
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| These were partially open when I cut them, but they've opened up and have looked good for over a week. |
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| Those buds pictured above have fully opened. Spectacular is the only word I can use to describe them. |
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