Bromeliads are so strange- they look so ordinary until this prehistoric pod emerges from their centers and then it opens to display the most spectacular and unusual "flower". The colors vibrate and shimmer. They last a while too, so that you can admire them to your hearts content!
We don't get to have a change of season here. I miss the leaves turning, especially the sugar maples and dogwoods. We have a sameness that takes quite a bit of imagination to overcome. Thankfully through the miracle of magazines like Country Living I can vicariously experience the Holidays proper! Yesterdays mailbox contained the newest issue, filled with delightful pictures of dreamy all white shabby chic christmas and how to make a gingerbread house and articles about victorian paper ornaments. The Christmas in Vermont article celebrating the annual Wassail Weekend in Woodstock gave me a shiver as I longingly gazed at the snowy trees and houses. How do they do that? Did it snow already there this year? It couldn't be from last year, so it must have. The layout is gorgeous and gives me a moment to relive some of my youth, flying down hills on a sled with my cousins. The time Mitchell lost control and hit a tree and we all fell on the snow, laughing till we cried-he wasn't hurt, just his pride! Oh, the snow ball fights and snowmen! Borrowing my Dad's post office hat and ear muffs and having a snow-mail-man! Then I hear a bird sing and look up and see my front yard, and I'm back in the tropical land of sameness again. We do have the windows open today- it's 68! Ya hoo! I'll be closing them later today when it hits 78 I'm sure.