U.W. Greenhouse

Nile heard a rumor that a corpse flower is at bloom at the U of W greenhouse, so she went to check it out. They didn't have a corpse flower, but they did have other species in the same genus in bloom.


This is an Amorphophallus that is emerging from its resting stage.


This is an emerging leaf on another related species.


Each year it dies completly back to the ground and regrows bigger. After several years of dying back and regrowing it can be quite big. This is the corpse flower in its vegitative state. It is about 2 meters tall.


Once it has enough energy, after dying back multiple times, it regrows as a flower. This one is Amorphophallus abyssinicus from Nigeria.

This is the inside of the flower. Reading down the inflorecence, the purple wrikly part is non-sexual, the lighter part is male, and the darker spotted part deep down is female.

After it is pollinated, the petal and male part die off and the female part develops into seeds. This is the corpse flower that bloomed a while ago.

These are the seeds up close. It won't produce seeds unless it is polinated. In the wild the stench of the flower attracts flies which polinate it. (It smells like a corpse, hence the name.) In the greenhouse they polinate it with deep frozen pollen.
They have quite a collection of plants in this genus.

They have other exotic life forms including this cute little frog.

They have a large collection of passiflora as well.

Another strange thing Nile saw there was this giant coffee bean-looking palm seed. It was at least a foot across. Not the pot, but the seed. She has no idea what the stuff surrounding it in the giant tub is. It says "Do Not Touch," so she didn't, and therefore couldn't figure it out.

Nile never saw a larger pitcher plant than this one. The pitcher was more than a foot long.

... and the plant was very large too.

Every botanist's favorite plant, welwitschia, was growing there too.

It seemed that most everything was in bloom at the greenhouse, including the welwitschia.

Here are some flowering carnivourous plants as well.



"Come again!"

More home improvement

Last week, Nile was invited to a dinner at an art collector's house and came home inspired to put more things on the wall. Here are some that were up already. The top two are Eiji's (Nile's uncle) Italy landscapes, and the bottom four are Romney's (a friend from Toronto) Italy landscapes.

This is a new picture that Nile put up after her inspiration. It is a tinga-tinga painting that she got in Tanzania. It looks really small in this picture, but we think it's proportional. We have a larger one (later) that we were thinking of putting here, but it was much too big. Nile thinks she should go back to Tanzania to get the right size.

Here is another tinga-tinga.

This is our largest tinga-tinga, but we don't know where to put it yet.

Matt at Nile's work

Matt visited Nile on Saturday while she worked. There were pretty things in bloom.




Last week Ivan and Frank were being rebel cats but this week they were mellow and napping inside all day.

Nile loves the color of this one!


Orchid version of butter and eggs?


Red Passion Flower

Matt's friend Ari didn't believe Nile that Crown of Thorns came in any other color than red. Here is a yellow one.



The wasabi plants that Matt donated last year have been doing well under David's care.
The cacti are blooming now too.
Double pettaled Daffodils

Easter Mini-trip (complete with bunny)

Anita and Jim are buying this house. We went to go take a look with them and give them our moral support.

As some of you know, whenever Nile is around people feel comfortable spending lots of money. This is the view from their breakfast nook. (Nile in the foreground.)

The house has a fabulous kitchen where 4 people can work comfortably. We are jealous.

Here is the front of the house. Anita has grand plans about redoing the landscaping. There is a 3 car garage in the back with a workshop where Jim looks forward to spending time.

We went to check out the beach clubhouse that the community owns. If you park there, it has to be for 72 hours. (That's what the sign says.) We parked for 5 minutes.

There is a nice little hike through a forested area near the water. We found a great big yellow slug there. We wanted to pickle it for Romney, but we didn't have a jar.

Tulip festival starts next week in the area, so we went to check out the tulips.

There were fields and fields of tulips. Here are some especially impressive ones with double petals.

It was raining lightly which made the tulips look fresh.



There was a bus parked in the middle of the tulip field.



Between the tulip fields were Jersey cows which Matt liked.

Yay cows!

Entering La Conner we found a fire hydrant. We wonder what the firemen think about this.

A bunny greeted us as we entered La Conner. Happy Easter!

Anita took us out for a yummy lunch. Matt topped off his lunch with a little slice of cake.



Driving out of La Conner we saw daffodils.

We got off the freeway because it was moving slowly, only to be stopped by the draw bridge in action.

Here's the little boat we stopped for.

Green light, off we go!

Hanami

We went on a hanami picnic this Sunday. Hanami is a traditional Japanese picnic under a blossoming cherry tree. The weather has been fantastic recently and we were especially lucky this day.

We spent all morning cooking various dishes. We made about seven different dishes ranging from umeboshi onigiri, to ocha dango. It was all really tasty. Our friend Kirsten was able to join us too. Matt was lame about getting the details out to his work friends in time, so they wern't able to make it.

Matt's team took today off. They went out for brunch and then rock climbing. Left to right, Joe (on the wall), Russell, Mike, Ari, Matt, Radha.

Here's Matt scaling an overhang. He was only able to do two climbs because he's so out of shape. He had a lot of fun though and helped Russell with the belaying.