WINTERING IN NEW ENGLAND AND QWIKI

Many years ago I visited an acquaintance in Vermont, North,almost  to the Canadian border.  I was surprised to see that her kitchen sink and appliances were a bright red.  I said I had never seen red stoves and refrigerators before and she laughed and told me that I had not been in upper Vermont in the winter, either.  We shared  love for color in the winter to counter the white of the snow.  I get my color from flowering houseplants and prisms hanging in most of the windows that catch sunshine and cast rainbows around the room.

I've admired many friends who have green houses, solariums, conservatories or other great spaces for growing plants.  My house is more limited so I cut down every tree on my lot and made the widest windows sills I could have made.  Every sill in my twelve room house has plants and I thrill when they blossom and add color when the only view from the window is dirty snow piled high and gray tree trunks surrounding me in my neighbors' yards.

Though I have been growing plants for 60 years, it always surprises me when I find a new variety or genus.  Someone gave me a furry-leaved plant that grew and grew and finally blossomed with gorgeous purple blossoms.  My friend could not tell me what it was.  It looked like a primrose and that is what I believed it to be though I couldn't find an exact match in the 500 or 600 pictured I looked through.  After several years, with this plant rewarding my with blossoms much of the year, I went on the new resource qwiki.com.   First I looked up African Violets then noticed Streptocarpus on the same page.  At last, a great resource and a problem solved, all in one click.

For those not familiar with the new site you are in for a treat.  I am advised that it is a totally automatic, computer-generated site and requires no humans.  Everything happens in the computer.There are already millions of entries and the site expects to add many, many more.  It not only looks up what you ask for but reads it to you in a very pleasing voice.  You, too, may find winter in New England more pleasant when you don't have to travel any further than your computer!