A Winter Wonderland

What an appropriate name for a presentation by Dr. David Stark of the Art Institute of Chicago.  This time the Art Institute came to us in a suburb of Chicago to a wonderful century old golf club on picturesque snowy grounds.

Dr. Stark presented each area of art by its style and century the piece was excuted.  We were first introduced to Bruegel, Winter Landscape with Skaters and Bird Trap, 1565

Friedrich, Graveyard Under Snow, 1827

Renaissance to Rococo Fifteenth to Eighteenth Century

Limbourg Brothers, Tres riches heures du Duc de Berry (February) 1413-1416

Goya, Winter Scene, 1786 (Sometimes these scenes were painted for weavers who wove them into tapestries to be hung on wall).  A simplier version of this painting was first done for a tapestry.

Boucher, Winter, (Four Seasons Series) 1765 - All of them of loving couples.  Don't you love this sleigh?

Avercamp, Scene on Ice, 1625

Romanticism

Friedrich, Winter Landscape, 1811 - If you enlarge this painting you will see a man sitting by the large evergreen with his crutches thrown in the snow looking at a religious cross.  It is debatable if he has been cured or if he has come to die.

Turner, Snowstorm, 1837

Realism

Courbet, Fox in the Snow, 1860

Impressionism and Post Impressionism

Monet, Sandvika, Norway, 1895

Pissarro, Rabbit Warren at Pontoise, Snow 1879

Monet, Ice Floes, 1880 (painted after his wife Camille (32) died of cancer), symbolizes the breaking apart of his life.

Ashcan School, early twentieth century, realism, depicting people the way they lived

Henri, Snow in New York, 1902

Bellows, Morning Snow - Hudson River, 1910

Twentieth Century

Burchfield, Orion in Winter, 1962

Richter, Ice, 1989

I think I have changed my mind about winter, it is certainly art!  I still do not like the shoveling and the driving in the snow, but it is a fascinating happening each year in many parts of the world and to the artist has very life cyclical meaning.  If you would like to see Dr. Stark's complete visual presentation you can access it at

http://mdid.artic.edu/ , log in is public, password is public. left menu bar select Slide show, under Slide show select author Stark, David, select Slide show Winter Wonderland.



Why Is Gardening Getting To Me?

The answer is SNOW!  My garden is covered up, the snow blower and the shovel are my new garden tools!  I just love those grasses peeking out of the snow and my alley garden has been plowed but not totally covered up yet.

What happened to the color?  It looks like everything is in shades of gray and white.

The Rhodies have curled their leaves under the snow.

As you can see I did not cut down the Miscanthus Udine yet, I will be sorry!  Pennisetum always looks good in the snow and Panicum Northwind is the stalwart of the winter grasses.  Oops, my cabbages have had it and just about all of the holiday containers have been buried in snow.

Miscanthus Udine

Do you recognize the container in the header?

Rainbow Knockout

Too much of this already!  When I move inside, it is all about color, the poinsettias, the cyclamens, the tree, paperwhites and amaryllis.



Happy Indoor Gardening!

Gardening Inside Your Holiday Home

I love the fragrance of paperwhites around the holidays and each year I order some along with my amaryllis.  One year I went a little overboard and ordered fifty bulbs thinking I would pot some up for friends and portion out the rest so that I would have paperwhites blooming for many weeks. This was a great deal of work and certainly took away from the easy bulb it is to grow.

I am planting Paperwhite "Ziva", a very floriforus fragrant variety, in soil because I just want to see some leaves and flowers and not the bulb.  However, paperwhites can also be planted in stones, just like the amaryllis I planted previously.  They bloom quickly, about three weeks, so try to time it so you have blooms for the holidays.

They should be planted shallow, more soil can be added as the leaves sprout.  Moss can be added before they bloom.  Decorative branches can be inserted to hold the leaves and flowers.

I put three bulbs in each of the tin and copper pots.  They are packed tightly but that is okay since these are one time use bulbs in my area.


I am starting mine now and will hold them in the attached garage for a week if I have to, just want to make sure they are in bloom.  They cannot freeze, but if you have a cool place you can keep them from breaking into full flower too soon.

I have also planted eleven bulbs in this large container. 

They are set down a few inches in the container because they become quite tall.  Their leaves do flop and lean towards the light so this is another plant that will benefit from some type of support.  Again, I will use the branches, maybe gold this time.  There is a formula of grain alcohol and water that supposedly stunts the growth so that they do not flop, check it out on http://www.ehow.com/  I tried it once and honestly I cannot remember if it worked!

This is the new holiday green and it really looks better with my vintage furniture than the darker green we have used for years.

My amaryllis grew very quickly and may not last through the holidays.  I could have held it in the garage at a certain stage but I was so anxious to see the flowers.  It is a Christmas amaryllis and I knew it would be faster and shorter than the other types.  I may not even need the branches to prop it up as the large leaves have not developed yet.

Christmas Amaryllis Cocktail

Cyclamen has always been a favorite plant to have around the holidays but I have never been able to keep it going.  It requires a cooler environment and not too much water.  I think I have finally found a place that it thrives.

Last winter I bought three small cyclamen at Home Depot and put them in a decorative container in an upstairs bath on a tiled window seat.  They did beautifully all year until recently when they outgrew their pots and began to look challenged.  I decided to replace them with larger cyclamen and potted them into my matching McCoy urns.  They look great and seem to be rewarding me with oodles of flowers.

The poinsettia is a favorite holiday plant, however, be careful where you place them.  Keep them away from drafts both hot and cold and away from children and pets (although not as toxic as once thought).  Water sparingly (moist, cannot sit in water) but do not let them dry out or the leaves will curl and fall.  The flowers of the poinsettia are almost unnoticeable, it is the leaves that turn those beautiful colors.

This is a variegated poinsettia that I purchased at Costco.  I bought the same poinsettia last year and it held up throughout the holiday season.  It is low growing and very full.

The Memory Tree

When I was a child, my mother would always drag home a real tree from a lot close to my home.  After my father passed away it became my job to decorate, I guess my mother just didn't have the heart to do it anymore.  I was twelve and my brother was eight, so I took on the role willingly, it made me feel very grown up.

(These old photos really look shabby next to the more recent 35mm and digital, wonder what future generations will say about our digital)

We gave her a lot of bathrobes!

We had those big circus colored lights ( although I always craved my aunts bubble lights) with lots of shiny ornaments and tinsel put on piece by piece (my mother used to actually trim the tinsel with a scissors so that it was all the same length, but this was before my father died).  I remember my father drilling holes in the balsam tree trunk to insert and tie branches to make it the perfect tree.

This was my aunt's bubble tree.  For some reason it looked a lot bigger and more impressive when I was a child.

This was the tree I had in my first house, check out that tinsel.

I used to bunch up the cotton under the tree and carefully lay out the nativity scene.  Some of the animals were either broken or missing but most of it was intact.

I had a real tree for many years as my children were growing up, and I always wondered why my son was so sick around the holidays.  He was allergic to the mold spores that grow on the trunks of the trees, so in comes the artificial tree.  I have had big ones, little ones and the one I have now which is in between.

This is the real tree at my old, old house, into the bows that year.

At my last house I kept the ribbon but gave up some of the bows.  My second Westie Duffy is hardly visible on the white rug.

This one is my Memory Tree, it has everything on it from my whole life, my children's creations, relatives creations, student gifts, my pets through the years, even the car key from our family Volkswagen that was handed down to my children and even my nephews.  It was so used we finally donated it to charity.

As I decorate it this year, it has become very special, my mother-in-law's handmade ceramic ornaments are put on very carefully, my little felt ornaments that I made before my children were born are still in great condition.  Too many to count ornaments from the many students I had throughout the years, some with their names on the back, some remembered because of either the uniqueness of the child or the ornament.

Ceramic ornaments made by my mother-in-law

Felt ornaments (there are twelve) that I made when I was first married

Many handmade angels from former students

My daughter's needlepoint when she was seven

I try to add a few trendy things each year, like my sparkling butterflies and fancy beads, but the star is pretty old fashioned, along with my vintage ornaments and those shiny ones from my childhood.  It will never look striking unless you get up close and personal with it!

Vintage ornaments and lots of Westies.  We have had three West Highland White Terriers through the years so there are may types of Westie ornaments on our tree.

Paddington and many storybook characters are on the tree.

Do you think Reggie will leave the teddies alone?

A gift from our realtor when we moved into my present home in 2003.

Have fun decorating, know matter how much or how little you do for the holidays, keep it personal!