From Spring and Summer to White?

This is definitely proving to be a winter like some we used to have quite regularly…. The worst storm of the winter decided to pop up quite unexpectedly yesterday while we were exploring the beauty of Spring and Summer in Philadelphia.

Yesterday was the first full day of the Philadelphia Show. We ended up going there as a last minute decision, and were expecting to meet Marla and a granddaughter or two. We didn’t get to see the granddaughters, but spent some nice time with Marla.  The weather forecast was calling for heavy rain all day, and we left home in rain, some quite heavy on the way to Philly.

The Philadelphia Flower Show is a Huge, Beautiful show full of displays of flowers and gardens of all types. This year’s theme was based on Paris, so there were many Parisian inspired displays. One of the first big ones we saw was this display of roses that had toppled due to someone (or more) touching the outer ring of roses. It looked like a horribly challenging thing to fix with crowds of people watching.

Here is part of a display of very opulent tables perfect for a wedding… I loved all the pink…  I will post a bunch of photos and not too many words here:
Oops!  If I would get the captions with the photos I wouldn’t have to write so much…. This is a beautiful Yellow Lady Slipper Orchid.

There were even weeds in this display… It was a natural looking woodland walk.

There were 4 displays done like this… The dancer image is made from various items including cut up cans to create the shadow.

Not sure how comfy this would be, but it was beautiful!

I just HAVE to find out what variety of Lily this is… I am pretty sure is is a Lily that seems to grow like and Oriental or Asiatic by the looks of the foliage.

Here is another one for researching… The plants these flowers were coming from looked to be Pitcher Plants… I have never seen flowers like these. There were yellow ones in some other planters, too.

The plants in this planter were placed between thin slices of rocks placed on their edges… a really neat idea! I love the tiny Alpines growing here.

There were lots of Hellebore plants in many of the displays… this is there usual blooming season. Another “I want”.

There were 4 parts to this display… Each had a floral arrangement that depicted gowns on mannequins.

A very large display of watercolor and colored pencil botanical art pieces really got me thinking that I need to start sketching and trying this myself…. I love these and would love to be able to do some of my own….

Very Elegant, simple vases full of Tulips… So pretty with the narrow metal bands curved throughout.

On our way out of the show, I was able to get a photo of the Rose display that had toppled over earlier in the day.  The photos shown here are only a few of the 270+ I took… There are many “flops” due to my camera and the very low light at many of the displays. It was a very crowded day, but it was great to be able to wander through the flowers and plants in the displays since things have been pretty white here at home.

When we finally left the city, the rain was pouring down…. Made for a few interesting photos, but it was not raining all the way home. After calling home to see how cold it got, we found that it had been snowing much of the day here….

It was spooky enough riding in a car on busy highways in the pouring rain, but things changed…. The photo from downtown Philly was taken about 6PM…. at about 8:20, the wet road turned into a slushy road, and the rain turned into sleet. We stopped for gas where this tree was covered in icy slush.

Fortunately, Ken is a much better driver than I am as a passenger… I spent most of the ride home gripping a door handle…. We passed a lot of big trucks that were not able to climb some of the steeper roads, but we were able to slowly keep going. Each town we got to meant we were that much closer to home. We had heard that our county was under a state of emergency, but we had no place to go but home…. The main roads actually were better once the slush and ice had turned to snow and frozen roadways.  Most of the main roads were plowed, but when  we got off them, we were following tracks made by others. The road we live on was the spookiest…. drifts over it, not plowed, wind whipping, but Ken was able to get the mini van all the way to our driveway!

Ken got the van off the road, just into the end of the driveway and we ended up  walking down it. We were not prepared for a 1/4 mile trudge through drifts of all sizes and gusty winds…. When we left home it was warm and raining. I had my duckie shoes for the mud when we left, but they stayed in the van…. My sneakers were warmer than they are and easier to walk in. I was lucky to have taken my gloves and always keep a quilt or 2 in the van. With no hat, I wrapped in the quilt. Ken had no gloves or hat, and carried our bunch of curly willow purchased a the show in the hopes we can get some to root. I don’t see well in the dark, and we had no flashlight, so I followed Ken’s tracks. Some areas were blown clear of snow, but there were some drifts nearly butt deep, not fun, but we were not sure how close we would get to home, so only walking the driveway was better than some options.  The first snow photo above shows our tracks to the front step. The other is one I tried to take of the bird feeders, but the snow was falling so hard the flash caught the flakes the most. Pretty interesting shots.

With all the snowing and blowing, we had no idea what things would look like this AM…. Well, here it is…. No tracks can be seen where we walked in, and the large planters that line the walkway are totally buried in snow. To the right you can just see the front corner of Ken’s big van…. A pretty big drift beside that.

The deck has quite a bit of snow on it even with the roof, and this is what the steps look like…. I remember the guys purposefully packing snow on them to make a sled ramp when they were at home. It is a ready-made ramp now…. The pool rock pile is nearly fully buried,too.

Here is the view out the greenhouse door, with my short handled broom to give an idea of the snow depth. The drift between the door and the Lilac bush is 3-4 feet… just guessing….

See that tractor nearly buried in the snow?? Poor Ken has to dig it out so he can use it to dig out a path to get the van out of the way of the pickup, who’s plow is not on right now…. It was only to be a rain storm with maybe a couple of inches of snow at the end….

The Dwarf Alberta Spruce out my studio window has a really neat pattern of snow on it, and you can see why the tractor will be needed to get the truck out…. The tractor will have to be used to dig a path before the truck will be able to get to where the plow is buried and then to get it out of the driveway.

I guess with the tons of snow, the Cardinal wasn’t as spooky as he has been… It was a bit tricky catching a photo with the feeder twisting in the wind with the bird clinging to it. It will be a while before I get a path to the feeders, so for now I just tossed some seed out onto the snow…. The birds approve. I had to knock snow out of the deck feeder before I could fill that one.

I don’t think the Red Winged Blackbirds expected this… He was very happy to have the tossed seed.

I thought I would be posting photos of slightly greening grass with the rain taking away most of the snow that was on the ground…. I guess not yet….

I am so glad I got to see Spring and Summer flowers yesterday…. Back to reality today….