Houseplants on Beds of Moss

For the New Year we were up in the Northeast, visiting relatives of Mr. Red House.  My mother-in-law is a gardener and has a beautiful collection of houseplants.  I love seeing them, especially since I don't currently have any houseplants, mainly due to a cat who can't resist munching on anything even remotely green.  (You should see the begging that goes on in my house whenever I eat a salad.)

I love my mother-in-law's exquisite collection of containers.  She keeps an extensive container garden outside during the summer months, but then brings many of them in for the winter.  Looking a little closer, the plants are made even more beautiful by her overwintering habit of covering the soil with soft pieces of woodland moss.

She does this as a mulch to keep moisture in and prevent the plants from drying out too quickly. 

(Thus one would not want to do this with succulents and other arid plants.)

The moss even kept enough moisture in for some seedlings to grow, such as these impatiens that grew up out of the moss.

I just love the beds of moss because they look beautiful.

Even a dead plant looks pretty good when it's nestled in moss in a beautiful container!

Honestly, just a container of moss looks good. 

Cup o' Moss

Can you tell I love moss?  If I ever get a houseplant again, I'll have to plant a bed of moss at the base.

Do you think my plant-munching cat would try to get into a terrarium?

Callaway Gardens - Butterfly House

While in Georgia for the Christmas holiday, we had the fortune of visiting Callaway Gardens.  After seeing some of Callaway Gardens' amazing birds of prey, we had just enough time to see a few butterflies before getting supper and driving through their spectacular Fantasy in Lights show. 

The Cecil B. Day Butterfly Center is large, glass-enclosed, conservatory filled with tropical flowers and even a small waterfall.  Hundreds of tropical butterflies representing 50 species fly freely around the conservatory.

tropical flowers inside the Cecil B. Day Butterfly Center

I do not know a lot about tropical butterflies and am therefore am not good at identifying them.  Thus I was quite stunned when, at the sight of the very first butterfly we came upon, my four-year-old calmly stated, "Oh look!  There's a Blue Morpho butterfly."

Blue Morpho butterfly at a banana cage at Callaway Gardens

Well, at least she's learning something useful from those TV shows!
Go, Diego!  

Later on, we saw a Blue Morpho with the beautiful wings opened.

Blue Mopho butterfly at Callaway Gardens

There were also many butterflies from the Heliconiinae family, which are often called longwings.

Tiger Longwing butterfly at Callaway Gardens

Some of the most stunning butterflies from this category are the Cethosiea, or lacewing, butterflies.

Lacewing butterfly at Callaway Gardens

Once up close, one can easily see why they are called 'lacewings'.

Lacewing butterfly at Callaway Gardens

Several of the butterflies looked like it had been a long day and they were ready to leave...

Clipper butterfly at Callaway Gardens

While other, most likely younger butterflies nectared on the plentiful flowers, and many more flitted about the conservatory.

I think this is a Great Eggfly butterfly, nectaring on pentas.

Besides the butterflies, the tropical conservatory itself was a treat, full of beautiful and even unusual look flowers.

I think I need some pink crocosmia for my garden now...

Outside of the butterfly room are all the chrysalises of the different butterflies behind glass with what looked to be a tunnel for newly emerged butterflies to fly into the butterfly conservatory.  Pupa are shipped to the butterfly center from Malaysia, the Philippines, and Central and South America.

Butterfly chrysalises at Callaway Gardens

I had such a great time at Callaway Gardens seeing the Birds of Prey show and visiting the Butterfly Center; however, my kids' favorite part of the day was the holiday light show.  Five miles of music combined with millions of Christmas lights - well, I guess it's hard to compete with that!

linking with the Little Red House blog for Mosaic Monday

Callaway Gardens - Birds of Prey

In Georgia for the Christmas season, we were delighted to visit the famous Callaway Gardens.  Callaway Gardens is best known for their enormous display of over 20,000 beautiful azaleas.  Some spring I would love to see them all in bloom!  In winter, however, the main attraction of Callaway Gardens is their holiday light show, Fantasy in Lights, a five mile stretch of various holiday scenes made up of over 8 million lights and accompanied by music. 

My two and four year old girls were very excited when they found out we were going to a light show.  We arrived a few hours before nightfall so that we could see what else the gardens offered before driving through the lights.  I wanted to see what winter gardens they had - most likely located in the John A. Sibley Horticultural Center - but for some reason looking at plants was low on my kids' list of things to do.

Aha, some winter flowers at the famous Callaway Gardens!

I managed to see at least a few flowering bushes - flowering quince, I believe - on the way to the first event of the afternoon, the Birds of Prey show.  Callaway Gardens has about a dozen different birds that rotate in their shows, and during our show, four beautiful birds were displayed.

Cedar, a Great Horned Owl, sits on the glove of a trainer at Callaway Gardens

Each bird was allowed to fly around the small amphitheater while the trainer expounded on its traits.

Great Horned Owl in flight

A few months ago, a man came to the place where my mom worked to ask if he could use the roof of the tall building to capture a hawk for a Bird of Prey show.  Thankfully, they told him no.  Capturing a wild raptor is not only sad, but also usually illegal.  The birds at Callaway Gardens are all birds that have been rehabilitated after getting hurt or are in some way unable to survive in the wild due to well-meaning people finding them and 'rescuing' them. 

This Red-tailed Hawk is blind in one eye.

We often see hawks like this Red-tailed Hawk flying around our area in North Carolina on a clear day, looking for prey.  This might be why I see many more birds at my bird feeder on cloudy days..

The red tail feathers for which the Red-tailed Hawk is named.

It was fascinating to learn that not only do hawks see much better than humans do, they also see faster.  To us, the wings of a flying hummingbird are just a blur, but a hawk can see and register each wing beat.  All the better to hunt with, my dear..

Guinevere, a Red-tailed Hawk at Callaway Gardens
After being named, Guinevere was found to actually be a male bird.

Most hawks are solitary hunters.  However, at the Birds of Prey show we had the fortune of seeing a Harris's Hawk, a type of hawk that hunts in packs.

Rohmann, a Harris's Hawk at Callaway Gardens

Harris's Hawks, native in the Southwest, are fairly social birds and often live and hunt in family groups.  Because of this cooperative hunting, they can take down larger animals such as jackrabbits.

Harris's Hawk

The last bird to be shown was a surprisingly handsome Black Vulture.

Vinnie the Vulture, a Black Vulture at Callaway Gardens

Vultures and other scavengers actually play a very important and much-needed role in the ecosystem.  They keep the environment free of carcasses as well as limit the spread of many diseases.  The stomach acid of vultures is impressively corrosive and can kill germs such as botulism, anthrax, and even HIV, according to the bird's handler.

Vultures get a bad rap, but they are actually play a very important part in the ecosystem.

So it would seem that nothing could kill a vulture, right?  

Sadly, several types of vultures in southeast Asia have become nearly EXTINCT in just the past 10 - 15 years due to a drug called Diclofenac, which is used as a common pain-killer and anti-inflammatory for humans and animals.  It is often used in cattle to reduce joint pain in order to keep them able to work for longer - however, it causes acute kidney failure of the vultures who eat the carcasses.  

Thankfully, the Indian government has finally recently banned the drug for animals, and Nepal and Pakistan are following suit.  Unfortunately, it will be some years before the vulture population totally recovers.

Black Vulture in flight

For more great information about some different birds in the Birds of Prey show, as well as to see what Callaway Gardens is like in the spring, check out Southern Meadows, a great Georgian gardening blog site.

Next blog post... Callaway Gardens' tropical butterfly house!