Crowds come to see Waldo

For some, the stench of the flower has lost its novelty. Patty has put on her gas mask to avoid the it. Nile is still good friends with Waldo though.

They cut a window in the side to collect pollen.


Through the window you can see the flower parts. The male parts are on top, and the female parts are on the bottom.
The spot on the news last night made Waldo (the corpse flower) really popular. Crowds gathered outside before the conservatory opened

Blooming Corpse Flower

The Amorphophallus titanum bloomed last night!

A couple TV crews showed up. King 5 news did a spot and some live broadcasts as well.
They interviewed this self-described garden nut. He was all enthusiasm for the camera (ooh-la-la!) but left promptly after they shot the footage.

Inside the flower you can see dropplets of the stinky stuff. It smelled pretty foul; it was a bit like a rotting rat carcas, but also resin-like. At the very base of the spadix are the flowers. The female flowers mature first and need to receive pollen within 24 hours of the bloom opening. Unfortunatly they were not able to get the pollen in time. The male flowers mature later to eliminate the possibility of self-polination. The flower is pollenated by beetles which are attracted to the smell. This is a weevil crawling up the outside. The beetles climb up into the flower, and then the flower closes back up and traps them in. They root around in the bottom transfering polen from another flower to this one, and then the male flowers mature and they get coated in polen again. Then the flower opens back up and the beetles go out in search of something to eat.

This picture was taken 4 hours after the first one. The bloom is significantly more open and the stench is much stronger. We got a picture of us infront of it to give you some idea of the scale.
Live on the 10:00 news, it looks like a scene from Little Shop of Horrors.

Happy 3rd Anniversary

Nile and Kirsten baked a cake and we put 3 candles on it to celebrate. We had to crop out the cake, but the dinosaurs are cute. :-)

Flowers and organizing

There are lots of pretty cacti in bloom in the conservatory. On the left is an orchid cactus. Even the mean prickly pear (on the right) has pretty flowers.

We have been on an organizing kick for the last ten days or so. We got these tubs that mount on tracks under the table at Ikea. Matt installed them, and now everything that was on top can go inside. We keep blankets in the tubs for when we watch movies.

We got two new bookshelves for the pantry. There is still a lot of open space in them.

During our organizing kick, Nile found pictures that used to be up on our fridge in Toronto. The chicken collage is finally up again. Some of the things on top of the cabinets will move to the book shelves in the pantry so it will be less cluttered.

We also got new bins and baskets to organize our computer stuff and games.

Flowers at the conservatory

As usual, there is a lot in bloom at the conservatory. This time of year there are even wildflowers blooming outside. Here are some California popies which are red on the outside and orange on the inside. The purple flowers are columbines. It's been rainy these days and the windows inside are dripping with condensation.

Next month's flower is the Fuscia. These are Nile's favorite - Flying Saucers. We also like this dessert rose because it reminds us of Africa. It grew near the lakes where we saw hippos.


This month the seasonal house is filled with hydrangia and fuscia.

Moving the stove

Our stove sticks out into the kitchen about four inches more than it needs to. The reason is that there is a conduit box mounted on the wall behind the stove. By moving the box down about a foot, it would allow the stove to fit back against the wall. Matt estimated that it would take about 30 minutes to move the box down if all went well. After pulling out the breakers, with pliers, Matt disassembled the conduit box and realized that we'd need some parts from the home improvement store.

About 6 hours later, Matt had rewired the electrical and moved the box down. Nile pointed out that Hofstader's law, (It takes twice as long as you think it will, even when you take into account Hofstader's law), was not quite accurate in this case. It took much more than twice Matt's estimate. Our stove moved back about three inches. Unfortunatly, the drawer can't close all the way because it hits the conduit box when we pushed the stove back.

Napa Valley

We left San Francisco by the Golden Gate bridge and headed North to visit Jon and Marcy who live in Napa. We drove through Nile's favorite tunnel. She likes the rainbow they painted on the edge.


We arrived in beautiful Napa Valley a little over an hour later and went tasting at a few wineries. It was almost a family reunion for Matt. Pictured here are: Nile, Matt, Deanna, Walter, Steve, Jon, Marcy, and Claire. This was the first time that Nile actually met Walter in person. She used to joke that he was "Imaginary Walter". It was also our first time to meet Claire, Jon and Marcy's 2 month old daughter.

San Francisco Conservatory

We drove north to San Francisco to visit our friend Kenneth. Nile really wanted to see the conservatory there. It's a lot like the one that Nile works at here in Seattle, except that it's about 4 times as big.

Inside they have a conservatory-shaped money box which you can stuff with donations to help support the conservatory.



Inside there are a lot of very impressive plants. Here is a banana. The purple part is the banana flower and above it are banana fruits. Next to it was a varigated banana. Even the bananas themselves are striped.

If you've been following our blog, you'll remember the odd looking seed that they were trying to sprout at the University of Washington greenhouse. They had a seed that looked very similar here; aparently, it's a double coconut.


We'll leave you with pictures of some pretty hibiscus flowers.