House-Garden Keeping Note

I'd like to apologize for the sudden absence of posts the last few days (as well as lack of responses to comments and/or emails) ... I truly enjoy and value my regular readers/commenters, so I do feel a certain responsibility to keep up my end of things here at the Oasis. Anyway, the thing is I've been pretty sick since last Friday, when some weird gastrointestinal disturbance hit me with a sledgehammer, and has put me out of action since then. It started with a horrid headache, progressed into severe stomach cramps, and on to what Woody Allen might refer to as the "full complement of nasties" throughout the weekend. I was laid low, so to speak, so low that I didn't sleep at all Friday night and spent most of Saturday in much the same state, from which I eventually emerged enough to take up position in my recliner downstairs for part of the day. So I took it very easy, snuggled in a blanket, and caught up with some of the programs and movies I had recorded on the DVR, most notably Transamerica, which I had been wanting to see for quite some time. Maybe it was the story (I think it likely was) or just the vulnerable state I was in, but that film really touched me in all the teary-eyed places. I was really glad I finally got to see it, and Felicity Huffmann certainly did deliver an Oscar caliber performance ... too bad she didn't win! (Reese Witherspoon beat her out for it.) Anyway ... I'm on the mend now, and though it may take me a day or two more to get back up to regular posting speed, I'm feeling much better and am almost up to solid food again, finally. I've just been left very dehydrated, exhausted and feeling weak, so I'm taking small steps back....
So, given the recent interest here in Celosia, these are a couple of shots from the 2007 archives that should give you some more tantalizing ideas of just what these versatile plants can get up to when left to their own devices. I've often mentioned Celosia's propensity to "sport" freely in the garden when planted with other varieties nearby and these are just two of the examples we had show up in last year's garden. I called the first one "Pineapple" (for obvious reasons!), which was apparently a cross between some 'Cristata' (cockscomb type) variety and a yellow 'Plumosa,' both of which we've had over the years in the front boulder bed. I wish I had collected seed from this one, because after appearing for a couple of years it has vanished this year and perhaps reverted to its original from, as I posited in an earlier post here. If you click through to the full view, you can see where the seeds form and emerge once the bloom has dried ... this is how all the 'Plumosa' varieties seed, so it's easy to see how they lend themselves nicely to profligate cross-pollination.

And who could quibble with the sheer, bizarre brilliance of this second sport? Again, an example of some 'Plumosa x Cristata' definitely, and wow, I should have tried to replicate this one, but as we are both often wont to do, we let them go back to ground to re-emerge in a different form the next year.... But then there's our new crush, Caracas, which we will definitely be collecting this year, as well as any of the odder ones that may still show up...