Snow outside, garden inside

A good weekend for staying inside and reading some good books or keeping up with the indoor gardening. Although the weather outside is indeed frightful, indoors there's some blooming going on.

Here's an image of the giant cactus and overgrown aloe plant thriving inside while outside the snow piles up on the fence and in the driveway.

This aloe blooms regularly, sending up long canes with odd little flowers sprouting from them.

Below is a Phalaenopsis I picked up in bloom at Donzell's Garden Center in the fall. After it finished blooming, I fed it some orchid food and new buds began appearing on the old stems. Here is a closeup of a new bloom:


















Below, the thrilling sight of my Lady Macbeth Paphiopedilum budding for the third year in a row. I purchased this orchid via Ebay and it is turning out to be my most successful orchid. It is certainly the most dramatic!





















What could be easier to grow than African violets? I picked up two fancy ones at the same time. They feature ruffly leaves with pink edges and the flowers are a gorgeous purple. The pictures I took today all came out blue for some reason.























Finally, here's a very special amaryllis (actually Hippeastrum) given to me by a graduating student two years ago. I was told that the plant was a daughter bulb from a family heirloom plant that had been maintained since the early part of the 20th century. You can see the phalaenopsis blooming in the background. I keep my indoor plants under fluorescent grow lights all year long.