May in My Garden

 

 

After the long winters here, May seems more like rebellion. Everywhere there is green lushness, lilacs in bloom, tulips, phlox, clematis, the bright green of new foliage; blossoms falling like rain.

 



This is a petunia grown from seed which looked very much like this bloom in growth, size, and color markings.

 

However, with all selfed offspring, the genetics can show off the recessive traits.
This plant has blooms of nearly white, but they retain the deep rose veining.
It is very striking. Another plant had a gigantic bloom, nearly twice the size of this one.

 

My nephew planted this container. Blue flowers are his favorites.

Tulip 'Ballade'

A virus, or a sport? Let Tulipmania begin!

 

Tulips in the Rain

 

 

 

Planting for Spring

Yellow Mountain tulips (Photo: Vanengelen)

I went pretty light for my bulb planting for the coming spring. The fact is I have very little space to plant. It is a hassle to plan any sort of design around existing plants and my beds are pretty well packed. My sole option is the corner bed which I ripped out nearly everything growing there. I still have two clumps of plants (daylily and campanula) I need to move, but am hesitant. I fear moving them to some other area will inadvertently also move a campanula Cherry Bells. I like this campanula, but it can be a thug.

This is the spot, to the left of the steps, for the Yellow Mountain tulips.

Looking at this photo taken about six weeks ago, I can how fall is in full force in my yard today! Lots of yellow pine needles and yellowing hostas and daylilies.

I also fell in love with a tiny yellow species tulip while visiting the Janesville Rotary Garden in late spring.

Yellow tulipa sylkvestris (Photo: Vanengelen)

Typically, not a clue where I will plant this!

I have a small break in my work schedule. Hopefully, I will have a couple of nice days weather-wise.

View from my dining room window, you can se the slight rolling distortion in the very old glass of my dining room windows. I think this rolling distortion places the house as pre-1910 construction. Some of the glass has been replaced over time and does not have this distortion. This window, at least, has glass dating the house to at least that time period.

Random Tulips on Mothers' Day

I can't help but be struck by the randomness of my tulips.  I have many in bloom, but I haven't planted any since 2012. There's a lot blooming already. But it is the definition of random.

Not a tulip obviously, but I can't help but include clematis 'Blue Dsncer'.

And there was this delicious treat, bread pudding with craisins and whiskey cream sauce.

Plants I bought yesterday to fill in window boxes when pansies are done.

Gold heart bleed ing heart

Curly allium

I thought this rose was dead.  Good thing it was an own root rose, 'Belinda's Dream'.

"Random" and Tulips

Could there be any two words that do not belong together more than the words random and tulips?  These days the young adults in my life seem to co-opted the word random as an adjective with incredibly more depth of meaning than just being unpredictable.

"That's so random." It might have a lot to do with how they see their lives, I don't know.

Although self-seeding annuals are a gardener' typical random event; this year it is decidedly the color combinations and placement of my tulips.

Typically, I have a bucket I store tulips bulbs found during the course of planting and moving other things during the course of the summer.  In the fall, (along with those I purposely dig because I noted fat leaves and no flowers in the spring) I bed these out and they put on a nice show and serve as a tulip cutting garden.  A lot of my tulips are types that will perennialize given the opportunity.  Like any perennializing perennial, many need to be separated and divided.

Last fall, with the fracturing of my acetabulum, Handsome Son and his girlfriend hurried got them into the ground wherever a hole was dug to remove bulbs which are not winter hardy here (montbreia, calla, canna, and the like).

Random tulips is this springs result.

Sunday in Pictures: Tulips in Bloom at The Paine

A Curved Line

This curved line has never been so clean, so incised. Oh, in my mind's eye it has always been, but in the reality of my garden, no. Even in this picture, there lingers a clump of bells of Ireland to ruin the curve; but they are gone now. And, from just to the left of this picture where my Beauty of Moscow lilac grows unseen to the Japanese peony 'Hanakisoi' (undistinguished from the sea of green on the right), I have dug out a curved bed. Waiting, as it must, for the tulip 'China Pink'.

As I have ordered lilies also, and they are never dug in a timely way for central Wisconsin, the trench lays in wait for delivery of the soft pink tulips that shall be planted in a conga line, like silly pink flamingos to dance in the spring by my silly little pink cottage of a house. I hate having to dig and plant in inclement weather such a Wisconsin can regularly bring to us in the autumn.

Of course, it has rained all day today; the first such day since Handsome Son graduated in May. And sitting on my deck steps tucked as if on purpose under the shelter of my dwarf leaf Artic blue willow in a plastic bag, warning me that it is not a toy, sat my box of tulips 'China Pink' when I arrived home from school today.

When Handsome Son was just three, he used a small toy truck to plant a white swoop of the lily-flowering tulip 'Triumphator'. It was an elegant statement in a side garden done all in white and green. He planted 100 bulbs and they have in a fashion, naturalized in what is now solely his father's yard, but which still shows line, form, and design from the time when we three lived there. Next spring, I imagine the tulips will bloom there.

And, my pink flamingos of a sort will bloom here in the coming spring.

The sunset tonight was all pink and peach and golden around the edges as the sun came out just as it set, to play around the edges of the wispy clouds. The light seemed ethereal, reminding me of a Maxfield Parris painting. Paintings that regularly decorated the floating casino of a boat in the Fox River at Elgin, where those other tulips will also bloom.

The World Needs More Tulips

Parrot Tulip It is a dreary weekend here. Between Thursday and Friday nearly five inches of rain fell on central Wisconsin. As I write this we are under a flood warning as it has rained a lot every day since, too. So I am indoors. Unlike Zooey Deschanel, I am not dancing and ordering out tomato soup on my iPhone4S. I'm pretty sure an iPhone4S couldn't get service here anyway, and it would probably pick out the same restaurant for tomato soup as Zooey's because I'm pretty sure it is not on the menu of any of the restaurants around these parts. Anyway, I have a long list of indoor projects to work on in preparation for Handsome Son's big day. Yesterday, I spent an incredible amount of time cleaning out and moving stuff out of my kitchen and painting merely a quarter of it. There are so many cut-outs, windows, I don't think I could lay a roller strip down anywhere. It is a very time consuming room to paint. This morning, instead I am working on gathering pictures from my laptop for a large poster size collage of all my son's achievement and milestone as a "brag wall". According to his dad, these are all the rage back in the small town his nephews and nieces are growing up in and in the greater Chicagoland area as well. I am not doing very well on this. I get waylaid...a lot. I have nearly 11,000 photos and video clips loaded on this laptop. Along with the ones of Handsome Son, and those I have taken for the village website, are oodles of garden pictures. Looking through them and comparing them to my garden this spring, I realize my world needs a lot more tulips. Tulips are a short-lived return on your garden dollar. Times being what they are, tulips are one of the things I have scrimped on. Some varieties, do indeed perennialize. Others do with a little help. I have had great luck with both red and yellow Appledorn perennializing. Years ago when my son's father and I first bought the house in Elgin I planted 25 yellow and 25 red Appledorn. Twenty years later, they are still there, in the hundreds each. Others that perennialize well include parrots, species tulips, and green tulips. Three years ago I picked up about 50 white Darwins on a deep discount. I typically do not have good luck with Darwins perennializing, but there they were nestled among the daylilies with at least 50 blooms yet again this spring. Others need a bit more help. Triumphator and lily-flowering tulips fall in this category. They are best dug up every couple years, divided and replanted. I have had good luck with many tulips once they have gone dormant, with digging them up, storing them until fall and then planting them out. I had an area I called the Tulip Walk when I lived in Elgin that I replanted all the stray tulip bulbs I came across when I weeded and gardened through the summer. I stored them in an ice cream pail on a hook in the garage. When they rebloomed in the spring they formed a beautiful tapestry of all colors, shades, and bloom times. So through this summer I will check my computer for pictures of tulips to find those lurking that did not bloom. I will dig them up and store them, replanting them in the fall. And I will pick out one more sensational tulip

and buy 100 or so and plant a Conga line of tulips along one of my curved bed lines that will make my heart dance in the spring.

Tulip 'Ballade'

Tulip 'Queen of the Night'

Lily flowering-tulip