Bulbs. I consider them little miracles. They come in unimpressive brown packages. You pop them into the ground and, if you're like me, you promptly forget them. Then months later, surprise! Blooms appear. And, if the bulb is well-suited to its spot, it returns annually thereafter. I planted over 300 new bulbs back in October and a portion of those, plus others planted in prior years, began flowering over the past two weeks. The only problem with bulbs is that you don't really know if you've got what you thought you bought until it blooms.
The area next to my backyard fountain is filled with plants flowering in shades of blue, purple, white and yellow. I planted packages of blue
Freesias. That's not what I got.
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| The "blue" Freesias I scattered around my dwarf Jacaranda began blooming this week |
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| With one exception, it appears all are a dark pink. The exception is orange, an unusual color in Freesias. |
Out front, in the area bordering our driveway, I planted blue and white double flowered
Freesias. Or so they were labeled.
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| This lovely blue bloom isn't really a double flowered variety but the blooms are large and the color is right |
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| And there are a few white blooms but, once again, the majority appear to be pink |
I usually pick
Freesia bulbs out of open bins, where there's always the possibility that someone drops a bulb or two back into the wrong bin. This year, I bought all of them in sealed packages of 20-25 bulbs. Instead of helping ensure my color choices, it seems to have had the opposite effect.
On the other hand, I bought 3 packages of
mixedSparaxis bulbs, 120 bulbs in total. Generally, I prefer to put together my own color mixes but I've never found
Sparaxis sold locally in anything other than a bagged mix of white, pink, orange and red flowers and, on this occasion, that's exactly what I wanted. However, thus far, every single one has bloomed in shades of orange.
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| The flower on the left is blooming on the front slope amid succulents, while those on the right border a bed in the back garden |
So it looks as though I'll be moving some bulbs around at the end of their bloom periods. I'll probably move the dark pink-flowered Freesias to the back border, which already has a lot of light pink bloomers planted in prior years.
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| All the light pink Freesia, including those planted this year as well as those planted in prior years, are mottled with white this year for some reason |
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| An effect of the weather? A virus? |
Maybe I'll drop the stray orange
Freesia in with the gold-flowered batch next to the patio.
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| Of course, if I moved the orange-flowered variety here, it'll clash badly with those lavender blooms |
While my "blue"
Freesias haven't met my expectation this year, the blue bloomers planted in prior years have delivered.
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| The Dutch Iris next to the fountain started blooming this week |
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| and the Scilla peruviana still look great |
The first batch of the new
Narcissus I planted in October are also meeting expectations.
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| Narcissus 'Geranium' |
And the lovely
Ferraria crispa continues to produce new blooms each day to replace those that bloomed the prior day.
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| The blooms may be small and last just one day but they keep on coming |
The
Alliums have produced only foliage so far but the first of the
Ranunculus, planted in shades of pink, white and purple, are just beginning to open.
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| Um, does that look purple to you? |
Oh well. Gardening presents an endless stream of surprises. I hope your weekend brings some good ones.
All material © 2012-2018 by Kris Peterson for Late to the Garden Party
