I call it the optimistic amaryllis

There it lives, in our den, near a north facing window. The pot is shallow, but maybe amaryllis plants like that, I don't know. There's a Cuban oregano plant that shares the pot. We have to trim it back every now and then.

We mostly ignore the amaryllis. It usually just sits there, gleaning what sunlight it may, growing slowly, thinking whatever thoughts an amaryllis thinks to itself. Maybe it's happy that it doesn't get chewed on like it's other neighbour, a twiggy hibiscus that we've had for 35 years. Both get watered whenever one of us thinks of it.

Neither of knows how long we've had the amaryllis, at least a decade, but it could be twice that. Somehow it's easy to lose track of how long something has been around. Every now and then the amaryllis surprises us by putting out a bloom. Several blooms, usually, in a lovely periscope shape. That's happening just now, so that's what makes the blog today. What does the periscope see? Snow. More came last night, on top of the melting ice from yesterday. Maybe the amaryllis is happy it doesn't have to find out how slippery it is out there. I didn't fall while shovelling snow, but I watched one of my neighbours doing a bit of a dance to keep their balance.

The close up of the bloom is fascinating. Such a lovely colour, and the intricacy of the veins, or at least I think of them as veins, is fascinating. Then the interplay of light on them adds to the beauty.

Somehow, it knows which way is up. Really up close and personal macro shots of these are interesting with all the detail, but the tradeoff is that you lose any sense of perspective. Even these are close enough that most of the photo is out of focus.

As some of you know, I'm often fascinated with plants when parts of them are dying off. Old leaves and blossoms are beautiful in their own right, as they slowly wither and crumple, or flop down over other branches. Sometimes the colour gets more intense, and sometimes it goes translucent.

That leads to some inevitable personal comparisons, but never fear, I'm still going strong. Still, I'm more mindful of news stories about famous people passing away at relatively young ages, meaning younger than me. But the ones that strike me the most are for the intensively creative people passing away just a little older than me. Why? It gets me thinking, I could calculate how many days I have left between my current age and their age at death. What would I do if I had that many days left? Most days, I try to be doing it.

Deadwood of the Day
This is the oldest photo within the last year that is of dead wood that has not been blogged. Though I'm not entirely sure now if it's actually dead. Or even horizontal. Life has many uncertainties.

In the periodic serendipity department I present this panoramic landscape taken during a fall ramble out towards Turner Valley. I was hunting for light, and usually discovered I needed to be somewhere else to see it properly. It's the same file number as the wood.