A SKETCHBOOK ODYSSEY

On the coldest day of the year, I bought an all white bouquet of flowers for Lisa to warm up the house and to think of spring. The Alstroemeria are a beautiful white flower with streaked with purple.  The leaves are alternately arranged and resupinate, twisted on the petioles so that the undersides face up. The leaves are variable in shape and the blades have smooth edges. The flowers are solitary or borne in umbels. The flower has six tepals each up to 5 centimeters long. They come in many shades of red, orange, purple, green, and white, flecked and striped and streaked with darker colors. There are six curving stamens. Pelikan watercolors on the last page of a Stillman and Birn Beta sketchbook.