Pawpaws in the Deep Heart's Core of Winter

In the deep heart's core of winter, things can be pretty dazzling in the canyon next to our house.

The other day it was a little warmer than usual so I got the pawpaw seedlings out of the shed and put them on the front porch. Then it snowed but still was just hovering around freezing so I wasn't worried about the roots getting too cold. Hence, the seedlings got to stay out in the light for a few days. Eventually the weather got cold again--into the teens--and I put the pawpaws back into the shed. It seemed so unjust, since we don't treat our other plants that way.

For instance, here are some little prickly pear cactuses that I collected in southern Utah with my dad a few months ago. They're sitting on the window sill in eye shot (as if plants had specialized photo-receptive nerves) of where the pawpaws were, out on the porch.

Here's one of the cactuses, growing another pad, soaking in the morning sun filtering through the window.

And then here's a bowl full of air plants. It so happened that, after our three earlier air plants died, I had the idea to get NJ some air plants for Christmas, and she had the same idea for me. So we have an overabundance of air plants now. I get the impression that air plants are to Christmas 2016 what ironic t-shirts were to Christmas 2006. O how fads shift so unpredictably over the course of a decade!

Over next to another window: an anthurium with a dead flower arching on its stem. I received this a year ago when a colleague left for England for a year. It was for keeps, so even though she's back, it's still mine.

And even this petrified wood, which I assume is indifferent to temperature fluctuations, gets better treatment than the pawpaw seedlings out in the shed. NJ found these pieces and they wound up on the table, where I began stacking them and now find that I need to have them sitting next to my place mat, in case I need something to distract me while I eat. The light brown pieces are sandstone and the dark one is chert. The sandstone pieces smell like spent gunpowder.

I know, I know--you're saying, "This is a blog about pawpaws--stop showing us a bunch of pics of your other plants and plant-like rocks." In response to my anticipation of your protestations, I've spared you needing to see my recently acquired grafted bonsai meyer lemon tree, moro blood orange tree, and persian lime tree. Instead, here is a pic of the uppermost layer of pawpaw seeds, which I recently took out of the fridge to check on. I was surprised but not overly concerned to find ice on some of the seeds.

And some icicles forming on the lid of the container.

And a final pic (sorry I guess I'm spiraling off topic again): a coral cactus, an Indonesian dragon head, a thrown and glazed pot, a Tonala parrot, an oil painting of Dead Horse Point commissioned in the 1980s by a uniquely soulful dentist, and my recent watercolor of a t-shaped Ancestral Puebloan doorway.