I made these little hand-stitched felt penguin ornaments to add to the Christmas tree at my office.

I melt from the cuteness. They were so much fun to make! I might have to get some felt and make a couple for my own tree.

What’s the best way to attract the attention of an 11 year old girl, who is upstairs and apparently ignoring my calls to come down for dinner?

Whistle Katniss’s four-note mockingjay song (from the Hunger Games) at the bottom of the stairs.  She came running and peered wide-eyed down at me.

I giggled at her for a solid 10 minutes.

Seriously, though, I think she has gotten more out of this series than just the adventure story. Emma’s class read the first book of the series in school, and watched the movie.  She then proceeded to devour the last two books on her own initiative, and we watched the movies together after she was done reading.  She finished the third book in time for us to go to the matinee of Mockingjay Part 1 on Sunday.  I read these books a few years ago, and watched the first two movies when they came out on Netflix. It's great that Emma’s growing up enough for us to go to the theater together for the last two.

She’s been all about Katniss this fall, and this sixth grader has made some very astute comments on recent world events. At various points over the past month she has talked to me, with understanding and insight, about how a dystopian society can form following a war or plague, about how oppression of a group of people by a privileged upper class leads to disaster, and how Katniss, Harry Potter, and Luke Skywalker have proved that ordinary people can change the world.

Ta Da!!!!!!!!!

Look what I added to my keychain today!



I still can't quite believe it.  I own a house.

In other news, I'm in the process of making this happen to my bank account:



I've never bought a house on my own before, with all my own money, all by my very own self.

To say I'm very excited (and also a little terrified) would be an understatement.

As I've mentioned a couple times over the years, I like orchids.  I like seeing native wild ones while hiking, and I like growing the tropical ones at home.  They're just such amazing plants.

Over the years I've had lots of orchid plants, but with various house moves and shifting around, most haven't made it.  Also, I don't have a greenhouse and prefer to keep my home on the cold side during the winter to save energy.  Most tropical orchids don't like that, at least the ones that will also tolerate very warm summer temperatures.

My houseplant-orchid obsession began in 1996, when I was working in a plant shop in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.  I had just finished my Masters degree, which apparently made me either over-qualified or under-qualified for every science job in the area.  So I ended up in retail for a couple years.

During breaks I would read the reference books we kept behind the counter, and the book on orchids was a favorite.  The flower that enraptured me most was Aerangis mystacidii.  It was the one that I kept going back to look at.  It's native to southeast Africa, stays small, and the blooms are clean white stars with long spurs full of nectar.  And bonus: the book said it was strongly fragrant at night and early morning (to attract the moths that pollinate it)!  Even the name sounded like something out of a fairy tale.

I finally tracked down one for sale in 2008. It was a seedling and had never bloomed, but was a healthy plant.  It had three leaves and four roots when I got it.  I hung it on my kitchen cabinet where it got indirect afternoon sun, and it put out a leaf or two per year and lots of roots, but still never bloomed.  However, the plant itself was very compact and pretty, and I was tickled just to have this species that first caught my interest.

I was patient.  And my patience was rewarded.

Nearly six years after this plant came to me, I now have this...



The flowers are beautiful, with the delicate white stars and long spurs that first drew me to the species.



They've been open for a day and a half now, and this morning they developed the fragrance I've been waiting for.  It smells like honey and stargazer lilies and gardenia and lily of the valley and something else I can't define, all mixed up together.  Glorious.

I've bloomed other Aerangis species before (A. citrata and A. punctata), but THIS is the one that got me interested in orchid growing.  This feels like a triumph.

This is really, really beautiful.

This has been festering in my brain for a long, long while.  Especially since that travesty of justice on Monday.

Can someone please tell me why a person's right to own a gun is more fiercely protected than a woman's right to choose her own medical treatment for her own body?

Please?

Someone?

I need someone to explain this to me so I can stop feeling so completely, absolutely, overwhelmingly disgusted with the country I live in.

I don't know why the Supreme Court or a corporation needs to be involved in the issue of whether or not a woman can use birth control if she so chooses.  I don't know why this is EVEN AN ISSUE AT ALL.