Oh the Wells Fargo Wagon is a-Comin'!!

OK, maybe not the Wells Fargo wagon, but something equally wonderful--the annual St. Croix Orchid Society Show at UVI this weekend.

These beauties won't make it to the show because they're busy decorating my front porch. 

My friend Karen & I have plans to take on the Orchid Show & have lunch at LaReine Chicken Shack. I plan to have worked up an appetite by then because I'm starting my Saturday at the Grow n Learn mini seminar on Agaves at St. George Botanical Garden. If I can manage to get in bed before the wees on Friday night I may even start my Saturday with a really early trip to the LaReine Farmers' Market to see my stalwart vending friend, Joan & pick up some choice produce. 

But the finalé will definitely be the Orchid Show. And here I'll allow more pictures of my crew to show you why I can't wait!

I Have the Need...for Seed, by Lea Ann Robson

Blooming Pineapple

Every year at this time peoples’ fancies (whatever that means) turn to Spring cleaning, & despite the lack of a temperature variant here in St. Croix, I’m not exempt.  My urge is also propelled by the fact my Mom finally succumbs to my pleas to visit around Mothers’ Day, thus making my usually benevolent view of my piles of stuff a little more critical.

 



Bumper Pineapple Crop!

I frequently joke that I have ADD, as in Artistic Deficit Disorder.  I have a zillion ideas, most of which I start in some format or fashion…& abandon for some other newer, better idea shortly thereafter.  Fortunately or unfortunately (perspective?), I have materials for nearly everything I think of…SOMEWHERE.  So in addition to the piles of half finished projects, there is always the trail of unrelated stuff I had to unearth to find those materials. At 51, I know myself well enough to realize that if I stopped to put away everything I dragged out, I’d lose momentum & never even start the project before grinding to an unsatisfying, overwhelmed halt. The difference between 51 & 21 is that you recognize that trait in yourself & are more forgiving of the resultant piles of ‘potential’ strewn everywhere. 

 

Potential is alternately my absolute favorite & most despised word.  The other day it caused me to decide the strangler fig vines my friends were pulling out of the Botanical Garden & heaping up to discard MUST BE RESCUED from that fate & stuffed in the hatch of my car so I could take them home & MAKE Baskets & trellises, & furniture & EVERYTHING!  (Sorry, the manic phase frequently comes out in all caps…no control over that).  When I got home, despite the fact it was misting rain, I was so enthused about the project I sat right down on my stoop in the rain & started a basket…at least I think it was a basket…like Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, I fear I may have switched the plans & been ‘knitting a Brazillian ranch house instead of a sweater.’ 

 

After I spent about 45 minutes & had a respectable start, it was quite dark out & had begun to seriously rain…& I hadn’t eaten in hours.  You can guess the rest.  Five days later I got sick of tripping over the pile of vines & the basket nubbin, & hucked it into a nearby bush so I could continue later…who knows when?

 

The rain continued all day Saturday, a beautiful, tropical, straight down I mean business Spring rain that thrilled my pineapple plants & banana trees, overflowed my rainbarrel & impelled me to run out in the downpour with every container I could grab, catching the gushing cistern overflow & putting it aside to water plants when the dry season comes.  My normally much more sensible dog Mu even decided there must be some reason I stood in streaming water, so she came out & got completely waterlogged watching me.  No doubt she was trying to figure out how to protect me from my feeble-minded self. 

 



Waterlemon Bloom

It was only later that I remembered the seeds I had planted in containers a few nights prior, no doubt getting the hoo-hingus beat out of them & most probably sloshing right out of their pots in the downpours.  I had planted several varieties of dwarf sunflowers, basils & zinnias, 3 heirlooms plus one yellow pear tomato variety, cucumbers, green cantaloupe, & no doubt something else I forgot in several planters & small pots.  It is probably quite telling that all the seed packets denoted the contents were packed for 2012 planting.  Yes, I got distracted last year & didn’t get them in the ground when I should have…no doubt because I started some other project midstream.

 

This morning I noticed several different varieties of seed sprouting in odd clumps, not where I had planted them but instead where they washed to.  I’m still heartened by  the sight of sprouts—the epitome of potential.

 

This weekend I made a pendant light by adding a fringe of gem drops to a boring linen shade cylinder.  I actually finished this project & followed all the way through to getting out my cordless drill & mounting hanging hooks.  The light looks very warm, glowy & inviting as I had hoped. 

 

For those keeping score, that is one project completed for the 278 started this year.   

 

I might up that ratio this week when I (possibly) finish a fun cigar box purse I’m working on.  It is actually the product of some past potential idea, wherein I had embroidered an orchid on an old jeans leg I thought I’d use as a panel in a cloth purse I was going to make.  I found the panel when I was digging for hat patterns (don’t ask!) & decided it was pretty cute.  It also coordinated with the hand-painted plaid I had done on the other side of the box.  So I cut a square of batting from some other abandoned project, used my staple gun & upholstered the 2^nd side of the cigar box.  I have an upcycled denim belt I’ll apply as the strap, & some coordinating vintage fabric to line the interior & after I apply trim around the edges, I may actually have something else finished…maybe.

 

At least no one can say I don’t live up to my potential…more like I hope to live long enough to realize all the potential I’ve started!

 

Happy Spring!    

Zone Envy by Lea Ann Robson

Pineapple w/limb full of mangos

I’ve been outside, gleefully planting in the mud.    My genetic clock refuses to be reset, despite 21 years away from the West Virginia hometown where these seasonal markers make sense.  It has to be some hindbrain function, as completely entrenched & unreachable as the tap-rooted weeds popping up through my stone patio. 

Ground Orchid cluster

At 2am, I was pounding a Phillips head screwdriver into my yard & wiggling it to make spaces for my new solar lights.  After that I planted hot pink, crimson & scarlet Kalanchoes in my yellow planters…because in spring we plant flowers…no matter how many are already blooming year-round in the tropics.  Lately Home Depot (oh, my beloved Home Depot) is chock full of continentals (stateside transplants), mostly women close to my age, filling carts with anachronistic bedding plants & bags of soil, in some knee-jerk reaction to Spring.  If our brainwave activity had a verbal interpretation, it would read “MUST DIG & PLANT…MUST DIG & PLANT,” like some Cro-Magnon tickertape printout. 

External cues are so different here.  Spring’s rays of light are of the longer, golden variety reserved for autumn in the continental states.  Mahogany trees actually drop their shiny leaves in the spring, with each breeze initiating an insane leaf dance that is at once graceful & leathery…& confusing. 

And yet these tropical tricks don’t still the impulse to add more flowers, plant herbs & vegetables, & to start over. 

Waterlemon (passion fruit family) bloom

The do-over is a common thread here.  Many of us came to St. Croix because something wasn’t working, wasn’t quite right where we were & we hoped this big leap of locale would hit our reset switch, knock us out of the groove we were wearing in our lives, & give us the new perspective we sought.  For many of us, it worked spectacularly.  For others, not so much. 

Even for the successful transplants, certain ingrained behaviors were either hard to shake, or reappeared after we had initially overcome them.   Though I’ve long since abandoned stockings & heels, I still tend to overdress in defiance of the casual chic vibe here.  It was part of the identity I wasn’t willing to jettison, regardless of the impracticality in this environment. 

So for 21 years, when March, April, & May roll around & despite the fact I have to concentrate hard every morning to even determine what month it is (our temperature only varies 5-10 degrees, year round), my brain says plant, & so plant I do. 

Some of us long to be able to grow things they left behind, & Home Depot’s packing policy fuels that nostalgia.  When they have room in garden supply containers bound for our islands, Home Depot packs empty spaces with whatever plants they have in abundance, regardless of their zonal incompatibility.  The latest is one of my favorites, Hydrangeas.  I love the shape of their leaves, their flower colors, & the fact they’re a living science experiment with flower hues indicating the acidity of the soil.  HD’s massed displays of the short shrubs are so tempting, even knowing what I know about how miserable they will be here.  Like dieting, frequently that denial of what we instinctually crave causes a pendulum swing & a binge the other direction.

Kalanchoes

So I planted Kalanchoes instead.   Lots of Kalanchoes.  Everywhere.

The subverted need to plant tomatoes popped out the other side & I planted instead the local substitute for cilantro—Recao.  It has a broader, long leaf with serrated edges, & when a shower hits them after a day of sun, the scent released is fresh & clean.  I also grow lots of lemongrass & several varieties of basil.  The lemongrass blob is huge & clippings infuse most everything I cook, most of the year.  I steep it with basmati rice, steam it with asparagus spears (imports, I’m sad to say) & Brussels sprouts (they grow here as do most cruciferous veggies—leggy but functional).   

I pound the base of the lemongrass stalks & steep them with lemon bay rum leaves, peppermint tea bags & a generous amount of Lipton bags to make a fragrant iced tea & a wonderful smelling house. 

A note here about tomatoes:  I have successfully grown heirloom varieties here, if you accept success as smaller & more sparse fruit that tastes pretty wonderful anyway.  A couple of their small, peppery slices on a sandwich with whole wheat bread quell any longing for pretty much anything.  And of course the season is almost here for mangos, Surinam cherries & my favorite pineapples, along with bananas… bananas… bananas (not a complaint, merely a statement of plenty).

Dendrobium Andree Millar
 

So as soon as the rain slacks a bit I’ll be back outside, drilling drain holes in planters, flopping big bags of soil from place to place & planting sunflowers, zinnias…& heirloom tomatoes.  (That sandwich sounded too good to pass up.) 

Happy Spring, regardless of what zone you’re in!