spring bolters
The pansies look like they’re screaming for help.
The Peacock Kale and Giant Red Mustard plants have exploded up and out. If you want to, refer to this previous post to see how they looked when newly planted. Since these photos were taken, the kale has started to fall over, and the pansies have been suffocated to death. With the steadily increasing temperatures, there is nothing to do but to relegate them to the compost heap or maybe eat them. This will leave me with a pockmarked garden until the summer annuals arrive at our local nurseries. That should be a month away, and in the mean time, I refuse to fill in the voids with short term spring color. For me, that’s a waste of my money and my time.
stripped naked
to its bare essentials. Last year I posted about the fig ivy growing on the walls of my home and how each spring I would cut it back down a third of the way and considerably thin it out creating a lacy look. This spring, drastic repair was required after our brutal winter had frozen and burned most of the foliage. Plus the ivy’s main stems had become too thick. It was time to start over. Well, sort of.
note about above photo: Once the camellia bush finishes blooming, I will wedge the ladder in to remove the dead stems on the left portion of the stone gable, but I’m too much of a fraidy cat to climb higher up the chimney stack. At fourteen feet, I call it quits.
flowering quince
This photo was taken March 11, but I’ve been unable to share it with you until now. In fact, there are a lot more spring garden photos waiting to be presented in chronological order. And yes… there’s a really good excuse for this delay. The old family homestead has been sold, and the new owner has kindly leased it back to us for two weeks, giving us time to set up an estate sale. Working a fiendish schedule culling, cleaning, sorting, pricing, and staging for this monster sale has left me little time for blogging. If you’re in Dallas and into collecting other peoples’ stuff, go here and here for pertinent details and photos.
a fundamental tulip
The Texas Tulip will survive all Dallas’ climate extremes and return year after year. It may not be as plush as its Dutch hybrid cousins, but once this bulb is planted, no other maintenance is required, and it will bloom each spring just after the Jonquils. So ditch the fancy bulbs from across the pond and invest in this hardy specimen.
another narcissistic moment
Whether they are Narcissus or Daffodils or Jonquils, I have several varieties popping up in my parkway. The above shot was taken exactly a week ago, and more have emerged since then. If I can get a more recent shot without the now tired flower heads, I will be posting it. As I have mentioned before, all my perennial bulbs were purchased from The Southern Bulb Company. If you didn’t know already, spring bulbs are planted in the late fall, and the narcissus varieties will return year after year.
Tags: bulbs > Daffodils > Jonquils > Narcissus > Southern Bulbs > The Southern Bulb Co.