Sunday, November 25, 2012

Sunday, November 25, 2012

Tonight's picture was taken in November of 2002. Naturally there is a story behind this photo! Mattie was seven months old and he was wearing a Union College jacket. This jacket was sent to me by my favorite college professor, my immunology professor. Prof. Styles sent me a few baby gifts when he learned about Mattie's birth! I was so touched to receive these gifts from him that I had Peter snap a picture of Mattie in the jacket so that I could email it to my professor. We always joked that Mattie would one day go to Union College, the college where Peter and I met. Like so many things, this too wasn't meant to be.


Quote of the day: Healing is not a matter of technique or mechanism, it is a work of spirit. ~ Rachel Naomi Remen


Peter and I have been working from home all day. One of the things we tackled this weekend was transferring many of our outdoor plants inside for the winter. It is safe to say that our home looks more like a jungle now! This transferring of plants may sound like an easy project but it simply isn't.

Here is one of our first green friends we brought in for the winter. We have had this Christmas Cactus for years! When it first came to live with us it never bloomed at Christmas time. So I renamed it my Valentine's Day cactus, because sure enough it bloomed in February. However, now that it spends the summers outside, it blooms at Christmas time like it is supposed to!

 

The funny part about all of this is I usually do not buy my plants. Instead I inherit them as rejects from other people. Meaning that someone starts to grow a plant, it doesn't work out, and it is given to me to resuscitate it! This Pygmy Date Palm was given to me by my neighbor. In reality when she gave it to me it looked more like it should be tossed in the trash. It was practically dead. But after several years of care, look at how beautiful it is now! I have spent time cultivating it, so there is no way we are leaving it outside to die in the winter time.

This bromeliad is sitting in front of one of Mattie's colorful paintings! I like the composition somehow. This bromeliad was given to me in January of 2012. One of our Mattie supporters bought it for us at the Foundation's 5% sales day at Whole Foods!

 

In front of our living room picture window are many of our outdoor plants. Peter wheeled in our Meyer's lemon tree and many of our other plants. The beauty of the lemon tree is that it has blossoms on it and if you have never smelled a citrus tree's flowers, you are missing out on a real treat. When there are lots of blossoms going at once our living room smells like an orchard! This tree blossoms and produces incredible lemons in the summer! The tree was sent to me YEARS ago from Florida for my birthday. The tree came as a tiny sappling, now it is about my height!

 

Naturally these spider plants also have a story. When I was living in Boston and going to graduate school, I had a lovely 80 year old neighbor named Ivy Berger. Miss Berger was a former school teacher who never got married. When I moved into the building she practically adopted me. She would visit often and she got to know my mother and Peter. Ivy, like me, LOVED plants. One day she gave me an off shoot from her spider plant. So I planted it, and years later from this one off shoot, I now have three different spider plants potted. Though Ivy is no longer on this earth, her plants remain with us. These plants were outside and we brought them in for the winter. I placed them right near Mattie. For in that beautiful Italian marquetry box in this photo are Mattie's ashes.