Hannah!

Isn't she lovely??????

Hannah was born today, Jan. 29, at 1 a.m.
She shares a birthday with my Grandpa K.
More soon.
(Abuela Marty's really an abuela!)

Season of Green

Today it was 54 degrees here in Reston. It's supposed to be winter. We have three snow days built into the school calender, I'd really like to use them. Winter better get busy! Sure, we had a blast of cold last week, but the daffodils are up and the snowdrops are actually blooming. Come on, snow!

It is the green season of Epiphany in the Episcopal Church - the season between the gift-giving of the Magi and the looooong, contemplative purple season of Lent. It's when we rush through Jesus' youth to His baptism and then on to most of His walking-around ministry. The green vestments and altar hangings of the season are said to represent the green things of God's earth and refers to the growth of the spirit of God within us in response to Jesus' coming at Christmas. Most years I feel like the growth we are to experience in the Epiphany season does not mirror the cold, dormant weeks of winter. This year, though, the calendars are eerily in sync.

Nature's green is catching up with the church season's green. It makes me a little uneasy. Even as I worked tulips into the flower arrangements for the week, I was thinking that the next time I have flower duty it will be Lent and I won't be using flowers. We'll be in that thorny time before the glory of Easter. Guess I'd better hurry and grow in Epiphany - Jesus has a lot of work to do getting me ready for Lent. Maybe I can store up some "green" energy to make it through the rocky desert of temptation.

Grandma's Car Goes to School

Aren't they cute? I told them to wave, can you tell? They're going back to college for their last semesters as undergraduates! They are driving Grandma's car.

Grandma's car came to live with us the summer of 2000, the summer Grandma died. It was quite a gift for us. The 1996 Nissan gave us some flexibility in who went where and when and has come in very handy as the 3 girls graduated high school and went to college. It's been a tangible reminder of Grandma's presence in our lives and it was fun to see Grandma's car go to college this morning.

Our youngest daughter will be student teaching this semester. She'll drive Grandma's car several miles from the university, first to a high school and then a middle school. She'll teach high schoolers with mental retardation and middle schoolers with learning disabilities. She's excited and anxious. She's also confident. I imagine Grandma will whisper encouragement during those drives. Thanks, Grandma.

In the Bleak Midwinter...

While sharing an Epiphany meal, the music rolled around to the hymn whose lyrics are Christina Rosetti's poem, In the Bleak Midwinter. (Click on the post title for a link to the hymn.) Many of us in the room sighed with pleasure, remarking that it was one of our favorite Christmas songs.

Fran, who has New Zealand connections, laughed when I asked how that hymn works in a New Zealand Christmas. She said they have their own Christmas hymns down under. I know from my years in Puerto Rico that snow is not a central feature of the Christmas season in many cultures. Indeed, here in northern Virginia, we had Christmas temperatures in the 60s this year - even 70 on the Epiphany potluck evening!

When this photo, taken last fall of friends in the hot tub, arrived in my mail today, I had to chuckle. During what is passing for bleak midwinter, there is promise of the summer. I hope the contrast of title and photo brings a smile to you. Midwinter is fine but "show your pedicure" weather will be wonderful!

Am I a Flower Geek?

I love a parade. I love the horses with silver saddles, I love baton twirlers, I love a marching band with drums so loud they make your heart beat a new rhythm. I'm not so hot on clowns throwing candy to the crowd but I love little kids waving to the crowd. I love a military color guard and a good Sousa march. Most of all, I love the Rose Parade. There were years when I wanted to be one of the folks who set up camp on the sidewalk to get the best free view, there were years when I thought getting a hotel room with a balcony on the parade route would be the absolute best. Now I think I'd like to get a good seat in the grandstand someday.

This year I watched part of the Rose Parade at a friend's home during a New Year's brunch. That's when I realized that I may qualify for the title "flower geek." When I was younger I'd listen to the descriptions of the floats as one might listen to a coded message sent to a spy. Now when I listen I actually understand (and worse yet, get excited about) phrases like, "accents include pincushion protea, queen protea, pink ginger and pink Asiatic lilies" and "The large bear is covered with palm fiber, corn silk and strawflower, and his red ti leaf canoe floats on a stream of irises and orchids. In addition to the real pine trees on the float, manmade trees feature paperbark trunks and foliage of roses and orchids. The float's deck is decorated with roses and daisies."

Oh, dear. I get it! I love it! Think I can talk a bride into using "thousands of roses, carnations, irises, gerbera daisies and gladiolas?" The description of that float continues... "Thousands of gladiola stems create large flowering blooms in the garden, while cut marigold petals are used to create the large orange poppies, which are three to four feet in diameter. Six hundred pounds of macaroon coconut is used to create the mother duck." Hmmmm, maybe the bride wouldn't go for the mother duck thing.

From the HGTV site: "Rose Parade rules require every square inch of float surface be covered with "flowers or other natural botanical materials." According to Hynd, natural botanical materials are defined as substances that "have grown, are growing or will grow." So flowers, seeds, mosses, barks, dried leaves, vegetables and grains can all be employed on floats as long as they’re used in their natural color. Dyeing is not allowed.

"Flowers are affixed to floats in various ways. Some, like roses, hydrangeas and irises, must be placed in individual water-filled tubes to prevent droop and death. Blooms that can survive without water, like marigolds, strawflowers and mums, are mounted on thin metal picks and stuck into floral foam. In a technique called "petaling," flower petals are stripped from the blossoms by hand and glued one by one onto the float. Dry flowers are often placed into blenders and reduced to a fine powder for shading sculpted forms on the float." Blenders! Who knew?

One of my friends commented that is was more fun to watch me watch the parade than it was for her to watch the parade herself. I feel loved, glad to offer amusement, but truly loved. Ha!

Here are a couple of my favorites...

City of Cerritos (#56)
Float Theme: Nature Rocks

Nature Rocks is an exuberant expression of the joy and fun that can be found in nature and creative expression. The first rock concert in history is about to begin as the Dino Mites, the architects of rock and roll, take center stage. Lead signer and guitar player, Elvis T. Rex, gyrates to the latest beat, sending two excited fans into an earth-pounding frenzy. The wonders of Stevie Ouranosaurus on electric piano will excite parade watchers, as will the drum rhythms of Ringo Deinonychus. Imaginative musical and stage equipment is artistically re-created with prehistoric bones, shells, flint, sticks and stones.

The dinosaurs are colorfully decorated in yellow and bronze chrysanthemums, green Kermit button mums, dendrobium orchid florets, dehydrated carrot and red bell pepper, and accents of limes, lemons and kumquats. Steel grass and oncidium orchids create Elvis's unique hair. Abundant gardens of over 50,000 fluorescent orange Mercedes roses cascade through floral clusters of bromeliad plants, heliconia, ginger and protea with accents of green cymbidium orchids.

Downey Rose Float Association (#96)
Float Theme: Springtime Treasures

The Downey float depicts vibrant hummingbirds and butterflies in a natural floral setting. The hummingbirds are brought to life with sweet rice, carnation petals, seaweed and strawflower, while the butterflies flutter with orange lintel, statice, onion seed, strawflower and red thistle. The garden and deck feature 18,000 roses, 12,000 orchids (including cattleya and oncidium), yellow thistle, yellow roses, tulips and a variety of live plants.


Photos are from the Pasadena Star-News website.
Flower/float descriptions are from the HGTV website.