Going Domestic

winter? what winter?

my favourite flower here
Originally uploaded by goingdomestic

There are several of these frangipani trees on the grounds of our apartment building, and the blooms have become my favourite. They smell divine (just slightly less-so than sweet peas, which are still my favourite). The white variety and the magenta pink varieties are very common in the area that I live, but every so often, I'll spot a tree sporting blooms that are a yellow-pink, and they're truly beautiful.

My mom commented a couple of years ago that it's weird to walk around outside here and see plants growing that she only knows as indoor tropical plants! Similarly, I get really excited when I see a plant growing outside here that also grows outside in Canada. I've seen a few petunias and portulaca, for sure. Today I discovered large expanses of sunflowers growing in the far reaches of our compound, and that was really exciting! I'm going to have to wander back to the sunflower fields and see if it would be okay to stick my kids in there and take a few photos. The flowers are probably at the right height for my toddler right now!

Tulip Tally

I think that tulip season here is winding down, so here are the results:

• Princess Irene
• Negrita (both from the 2003 and 2005 fall planting seasons)
• Menton (very lovely pink-lemonade colour)
• Black Hero
• Blushing Girl (the pink edging on the white petals used to be more vibrant)
  
• Marie Antoinette (though I don't have any successful bouquet action going on)

Kind of sad because the buds on quite a few of my other tulip clusters shriveled up instead of blooming. That's the problem that I had in the 2005 season. I eventually concluded that I was to blame in my eagerness to chop all of the foliage after the blooms were done, but I wasn't around last summer to do anything to the plants. I wonder what happened? Still not enough nutrients for the bulbs?

seeing is believing

Amazing. Those *are* the Princess Irene tulips.

In other news, I'm hanging up my tool belt for a couple of weeks. Chris and I are heading to Bangkok to pick out a place to live on Saturday, and I need to spend my evenings cleaning and preparing everything for my mother-in-law, who will be taking care of the toddler. I can't stand dishes in the sink, clutter on flat surfaces, and unfolded laundry any longer. My obsession with getting everything else done isn't compatible with preparing for our trip. And I am half-expecting that Tile City will call up wanting to install our new kitchen backsplash next week, so I need to clear the kitchen counters ...

can't hardly wait ...

There are tons of tulips in bud in the garden. I'm not sure where I planted which varieties back in the fall of 2005, so I'm extra excited to see what happens in the next few weeks! The thing that I am the most confused about are the tulips in the first photo. I didn't plant any bulbs in the fall of 2005 that would seem to yield orange/purple blooms. I planted bulbs that might in the fall of 2003, however. Could they be my Princess Irenes? I thought that I ruined the bulbs by snipping all the greens after they bloomed in 2004. They didn't bloom in 2005 at all. I didn't purposefully dig up their bulbs when I planted my second batch of bulbs that fall. I'm really curious, especially since I wasn't around last season to see what happened. The idea that those old bulbs might have become viable once again might explain the apparent proliferation of purple buds in the flower bed. I know that I planted three more Negrita bulbs, but I've got at least three groupings of them. I did plant the variety back in 2003 as well ...

because I need an upbeat post

The tulips that I planted in the fall of 2005 are up! Which means that they must have come up last spring, too! Maybe absolute neglect is the best way for me to ensure that they survive more than a single season ...

Garden Reprieve

I found more space for tulips in our backyard, so I planted fifteen more bulbs the other day.  If they all come up, I don't think that we'll be filling in with many annuals next spring! I am trying out these varieties:

• Black Hero
• Negrita
• Blushing Girl
• Cloud Nine
• Antoinette

Two of them are"bouquet" tulips - apparently each stem has multiple blooms. I haven't seen any in real life, but they looked neat in the photo at the garden centre.

Shrubs were also being cleared out at 50% off the regular price, so I picked up a drawf burning bush for $15. If it doesn't survive the next year, I can get a credit for the $15 from the garden centre, so that's not bad. I've never planted a shrub before, so it's kind of scary and exciting!

Putting the trowel away for the winter

Tulips are planted. I stuck them about eight inches deep, with a healthy dose of bone meal mixed into the soil. I'd earlier speculated that I didn't have any blooms this spring because the weren't planted deep enough (I probably only went six inches down), but now I think that my habit of trimming all of the foliage down after the blooms are gone was the culprit. I guess the foliage still nourishes the bulb for the season. Kind of annoying as I don't really like the appearance of saggy tulip leaves in my garden, but I don't really care for having to plant everything new every year, so I'll tough it out next year. I'm actually trying to plant the bulbs near other plants that will kind of disguise the limp leaves when they grow and green up themselves.

I am planning on 2006 being "The Year of the Garden" at our place. We have two places in our front yard where the flower beds are not very distinct and the grass in patchy. I'd love to extend them both, and fill one in with colourful phlox and the other with goutweed.  I have an envelope of seeds for lovely double-petaled pink poppies from my mother-in-laws garden, and there is a perfect spot in our backyard for a barberry shrub ...

Tiptoe

I'm putting this year's poor showing for tulips behind me and giving them another try. Madeline and I went off to Greengate one afternoon last week and I was delighted to see that I could purchase tulip bulbs individually! Whee! I bought three each of six different kinds.

Menton

Anna Jose

Creme Upstar

Blue Spectacle

Silverstream

World's Favourite

I'm entirely sure why the tulips I'd planted in the fall of 2003 didn't bloom this year, but my theory is that I needed to plant them a few inches deeper for this climate and shouldn't have been so quick to trim the foliage down. We'll see ...

The Mystery of the Shrivelled Tulips

Last spring, my little garden plot has these lovely lovely tulips blooming in it ... this year, the tulips came up again, budded, and then shrivelled up into little dried nothings. I was really puzzled about what was going on, and had it in the back of my mind to call into CBC AM when during their regular Tuesday gardening call-in segment. Today I was listening to the gardening segment at breakfast time, and someone beat me to it!  The gardening expert suggested to the caller with shrivelled tulips of his own to mulch around the tulips a lot so that the soil holds more water, and to plant them deeper - about a foot. I guess this depth works well for the local climate. Will have to try that ...

I'm not sad about not getting the chance to call about my tulips, as I am also wondering when we should prune our hardy rose bushes and the lilac ... more questions to ask!

Where did all of my flowers go?

I think I understand now why people who have spectacular gardens and a lot of money often have a personal gardener. I loved our flowerbeds last year, but since all we planted were annuals, we now have to do all of the work all over again! I really don't want to re-plant pansies and snapdragons every May ... We've made one trip to the greenhouse so far this year, and this time we didn't stray outside the perennial section except to pick out some veggies. I tried to find perennials with lovely colours, so we have some bellflower, two kinds of foxglove, a few violets, an English daisy, and a few more that I can't remember.  I also planted two dahlia tubers in the front yard last night - Chris picked them out. They're peach. I had a dream last night that I planted them all wrong *sigh*