Bodacious Bloomers: Alstroemeria

Wunx & I skipped out of work yesterday. To do so I needed a very good excuse.

Alstroemeria, Peruvian Lily, is a zone 7 perennial.

"Booked I am. Booked solid. In fact, I might die under the pressure if I book one more thing into this already overbooked schedule!"

Speaking of dying... when I head to the afterlife, I won't even try to plead my case. I'll be sent directly to the lying land of liars and there I shall rest for all eternity.

Perfect patio plant. Best grown in a pot, Alstroemeria will bloom for approximately 8 weeks, with TLC such as consistent water and regular doses of organic fertilizer.

In order to play hooky from a demanding job you must plot the great escape days ahead of time. Begin with a slight cough. A quieter than usual voice.

Or the cutest little sneeze you can muster.

Shiver when you're sitting near one of the powers that be.

They'll never willingly give you a day off but they feel extra special if they're the first ones to notice you're under the weather.

That's when they happily tell you to take the day off. After all, if you're contagious, you might infect them, which could subsequently ruin their golf game!

Now that I'm self-employed I need to be even more creative. An overbooked calendar is often the culprit. (If you take this approach, be sure to sound genuinely disappointed that you cannot participate in another snooze of a conference call.)

Once I snowed everybody who pays my bills, Wunx and I wasted the better part of our afternoon at the Blue Plate Diner.

They say full sun to part shade. Liars!
Alstroemeria prefers cool temps, blooms poorly if she's too hot.

After we left the Diner, we mosied over to my most favorite inappropriately named paradise: Cactus and Tropicals. (I've never bought a cactus there. But I have gone deep into debt on the brightly blooming flowers that overshadow those spiny desert plants.)

That's where I found Ms. Alstroemeria. On the sale table, no less!
Petey Pie knows how important it is to stop & smell the roses. (Even if he doesn't know for sure what a rose looks like.)