can haz orkid?

On New Year's Day I had some of my distant cousins over for a visit, including their daughter and son-in-law and granddaughter who are visiting from Sweden. It was an enjoyable visit, but they gave me an orchid.

It's rather helpless looking, isn't it? My uncle the florist took up orchid growing after he retired, but I never paid any attention. I learned what plant-craft I have from my grandmothers and my mother.

I suspect it would lean over far enough to topple that narrow pot if it weren't staked. I never stake anything; my plants are welcome to flop if they feel like it.

It's enough of an art piece, though, that I'm going to try to look after it properly. I think its attitude is somewhat cat-like in that regard. It's the part about "draft-free" that has me puzzled. I run the ceiling fans all winter, and in the summer the windows stay open all the time. This makes "draft-free" not available here.

melting

I don't know what the reflections are in the window in these two, but they add a mysterious depth, as though the tree were on the inside of the glass and the reflection came from outside.

Here, the ice is so very shiny because it's melting.

End of ice.

fields of glass

I appear to be growing glass out here.

Perhaps I didn't need to show you so many of these pictures, but I couldn't choose.

birds and ice

Even the bird feeder and the railing below it were coated in ice. (It was quite a job getting the ice-coated lid off the feeder to refill it.)

The birds managed. (Juncos in particular always manage.)

Here, the footprints appear to be in snow, but it's actually sleet covered in freezing rain. (Do you say frozen rain after it happens?)

Footprints preserved in ice.

ice and sun

Going back from the Christmas snow to the previous mixed precipitation. The ice continued not to melt, and I continued to take pictures from inside whenever I could.

Luminous, that's the word I want.

The motion here is not me and the camera, but the wind.

white Christmas

Snow on Christmas day is rare here in central Kentucky. I am so glad it happened in a year I wasn't planning to go anywhere until Tuesday, possibly not even as far as the mailbox.

I hoped the tree would act as a blind, but it did not. The birds were still nervous of the camera:

The cardinal above is the only shot out of many tries that has a still bird, instead of blurry motion, or a bird just out of frame when the shutter clicked.

Isn't it charming how the snow stopped neatly at the edge of the porch?

No footprints, especially not mine!

generosity

This is one-seventh of the not-too-perishable food our clients brought us. (We eat all the perishable stuff, and the divvy up the rest the last day of work before Christmas.) Every year I am stunned by the amount. I'm not sure why they think we'll work better on a sugar overload.

(The dark thing in the upper right is a tin of popcorn.)

I've given some of it away to my neighbors, because I can't possibly eat it all before it gets stale, even though I'm not one to restrict desserts.