Cattleya Crazy & Crazy Fog

Two of my cattleyas are blooming right now.  One is a large red/magenta one I bought a few years ago and practically tried to kill it (kept knocking it over, the shock killing the roots).  Thankfully I managed to nurse it back to health and it has bloomed for me the past couple of years consistently.  This time it has two blooms out at once!  Here you go:

Catt. species unknown

Frilly lip!

Frilly lip!

This is my favorite cattleya, and I'm sure you can understand why.  These blooms are 4.5-ish inches across at the widest part.  Their color is so incredibly vibrant.  And I know you don't know this through your computer screen, but they smell amazing!  Wouldn't scratch-n-sniff computer screens be awesome?  During certain times of the day, the smell is much more potent than others, and it's this lovely sweet/spicy scent.  My one regret is that I lost the tag so I don't know the exact species/hybrid of this particular plant.

My other cattleya that is blooming is a mini that came from dividing my mom's plant when it overfilled its pot.  This is a cute little one that is a vigorous grower and often puts out multiple canes of new growth at once, producing several blooms.  I currently have 7 (SEVEN!!) blooms blooming on this little guy!  I've never had a cattleya that produced so many flowers in one go!  These flowers are about an inch to 1.5 inch across, and I haven't noticed any smell from them.  Anyway, here's a peek:

Catt. species unknown

I love the bright yellow with the red lip.  So cheery!  Thanks, Mom!  Have I mentioned that we enable each others' orchid addictions?

Changing gears here, we have been experiencing intense fog lately.  The past few days not so much, but there were a couple weeks off and on where on the way to and from work, it would be so densely foggy that visibility was reduced to about a tenth of a mile, sometimes even less.  There were a couple evenings coming home from work where I couldn't tell how far down the road I had gone, whether I'd passed my street or not.  Crazy!  There's a street light and a tree across the street from my house and it produced some creepy shadows and light rays that I wanted to capture.  It didn't work out quite as I'd hoped (the light rays through the tree branches are a lot easier to see in person than in the photo) so I'm going to try again the next time we get some pea-soup-fog, but I'll share a photo that I took anyway:

Fogggggggggg

Miscellaneous December

It's almost Christmas!  How has the year gone so quickly?  This past year has been such a blur.  Nick and I have fixed up and sold two houses in Indiana, searched for and found new jobs in Oregon, moved across the country, bought a new house, made new friends, reconnected with (my) family, and even done a little bit of traveling.  Major life changes all in a short span of time.

This time of year tends to be hectic, and I'm sure many of you would agree.  I'm writing this post to share a few photos that are sort of from miscellaneous subjects.  It's going to seem like a very disconnected post since the photos aren't really related to one another.

One of my favorite parts of Oregon that I'd missed while I lived in Indiana was the fog.  In the colder months, the clouds sink low and cover the hills in a fuzzy white blanket.  Sometimes it's so thick you can't see more than a few yards in front of you.  Sometimes it's just enough to blur objects a few hundred feet away.  Last Sunday morning, we woke up to a thick blanket of fog.  As it began dissipating, it was still blurry but the sun was able to poke its way through a bit, too.  It made for a cool effect on our giant oak tree:

Creepy Oak

One of my favorite things about Christmas is the cookies.  Every year (with few excptions), my mom and I bake Christmas cookies.  I went to my parents' house and made a few kinds of cookies last weekend.  We're making more tomorrow, so I'll post photos of the cookies later.  But while I was there last weekend, I got to see Mt. Hood in the waning evening light, as the sun set and also after, as the light gradually disappeared.  The snow on Mt. Hood made an eerie glow while everything else was getting quite dark.  Here are my two favorite photos:

Mt. Hood, during sunset

Mt. Hood, post sunset

Earlier in the afternoon, when the sun was low enough to reach far into the house through the window, I took advantage of the bright window light to photograph my mom's blooming Paphiopedilum.  I love bright window light because it highlights whatever object is directly in the light, while everything in the background fades to black as the window light drops off very quickly.  About the Paph, I don't knwo what kind it is, but its blooms are this beautiful lemony yellow with a cute splatter of freckles across the petals.  Purely guessing based on what I remember from last weekend and not using an actual ruler, I think the blooms are about 6-ish inches across. 

My mom's Paph!

Nova (like the Chevy)

My husband and his college roommate got a dog while they were still in their Junior year of college.  She was the runt of the likely accidental litter of pit bull puppies; the one they'd originally picked out was a bigger, stockier boy.  Even though they'd reserved the boy, he'd been taken by someone else by the time they arrived to take him home, and the little girl was the only one left.  When my husband and his college roommate graduated, the dog went with my husband.  And now she is mine, too.

Her name is Nova, like the Chevy (but "like the Chevy" is not part of her name).  She has grown to be quite athletic and lazy, loving and unsure, friendly and shy, obedient and difficult.  She is a lot of opposites.  Overall, she's a very good dog and gets loads of love and praise from people who know her.  One feature that catches the eyes of strangers is her brindle coat.  The stripes are fun.

On a Monday when I stayed home sick with a nasty cold at the end of summer, I took the opportunity to spend some time outside in one of the few remaining warm sunny days, hoping some rays and vitamin D might help me get over my cold.  At the very least, it lifted my mood.  Of course while I relaxed outside, Nova poked around the yard, doing whatever dogs do.  Here are a few photos from that day: leafy branches of our 200+ year old oak tree reaching toward the sky, a portrait of Nova, and Nova rolling in the grass.

Leaves not quite ready to fall.

In this photo, you can see her muzzle is starting to turn gray.  Only a year ago the gray was confined to her chin.

Something about that grass...