Saturday 8 February 2014

A blind eye

It is shocking, almost frightening to learn how easy it is to become unaware of your domestic surroundings. How you can turn completely blind to things that are in front of your very eyes day after day but you just don’t see them because of their utter familiarity.

I had two amaryllises for Christmas. The other one pushed its third stem recently but it was such a tall one it fell down as soon as the buds started to open. So I needed the tallest of my thin vases for it.

I knew it would be in the living room as I’ve had some dried columbines (Aquilegia) plus a single cattail (Typha) in it since autumn. This is what I found.




The ‘cigar head’ had ripened and burst releasing a nasty-looking ball of seeds. I had no idea when this had happened. Certainly not on the day I made the discovery nor on the day before.  To my great relief, my photos proved the spike had been intact around Christmas so it must have been some time in January.


When I removed the first fluffy handful pretty little spirals were revealed. A cattail spike contains at least 100,000 – according to some sources a million – seeds each attached to a fine hair. No matter how carefully I tried to remove the fluff probably tens of thousands of seeds were dispersed in the air. I bet we will see them floating around for months.

I had better take a tour in the house to inspect what kind of horrors I’d find if I actually opened my eyes at home for a moment.

Painting by Sebastian Sandelin.


6 comments:

  1. Kauniita valokuvia kauniista kohteista!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Vähän kyllä tuo osmankäämin purkaus järkytti, mutta tuleepa tarkkailtua nyt muutakin hiukan paremmin.

      Delete
  2. Perhaps this is why I like to change things around quite often! I love the painting....

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm a colourful person but I couldn't resist this one. Sebastian is a friend, a talented young designer with impeccable taste who specializes in interiors. We will be seeing more of him on national television I've heard.

      Delete
  3. This is so true like Freda I move things around quite often so I can enjoy a new view of my belongings. That's a lot of seeds to find and clear away!
    I was surprised that you had already heard about the railway. Sarah x

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The vase hasn't been on this spot all the time so I suppose the bursting must have happened since I last moved it around mid-January.
      The natural disasters around Europe and elsewhere have been in our news quite a lot this winter. Today we saw some footage on the Thames floods.

      Delete