Laughing Ravens

 bulbs   lightbulbs     light bulbs   heavy bulbs I moved some two year old peony seedlings today. Tiny little slips of a thing. They made it through winter but they needed to move.  Why? Well... you've heard the expression: "right plant, right place" well, that would be a massive understatement. Two years ago I goofed up. Insert your own expletive. Yeah, that one. I'm cheap/efficient/lazy (add your own descriptive invective).... which is the short way to say that I zigged when I should've zagged. Last spring, we had dozen upon dozens of winter-sown jugs covering the ground. Close to one hundred and fifty. Way too many. The soil mix inside the jugs was custom made, ultra-high drainage, modified potting mix. Loaded with grit. Monty says you gotta use grit. So we used grit. Stuff is expensive considering it's just granite grit fed to chickens... but I digress. Two years ago, in December, we planted quite a few jugs with peony seeds. Paeonia rockii,  Paeo...

    crocus (macro)   What does it mean to "have enough"?  I used to buy a few of something. A few bulbs, a handful of annuals, a couple perennials. Why? Mostly because we were broke, just starting a family, the usual reasons for a young couple. But our scarcity mindset came from not having a clue. What does one crocus look like? What does twenty look like in that same space? Bit by bit, I came to realize what thrived in our little garden.  Now I see crocuses in a completely different light. I dont want one. I want hundreds. I want the ground to be blanketed in rich yellows and creams, whites punctuated with saturated royal purples. And I want to feel that color fill the air. Somehow the radiant color makes the mornings warmer. The buzzing of bees is slow and unpracticed after winter dormancy.    It's easy to want winter to hurry up so that spring can begin. Spring seldom lasts very long. There's always that pressure to dive straight into summer. Hurry...

Not sure if this was iris reticulata 'Harmony' or 'Pixie' iris reticulata 'Purple Hill' 'Blue Hill' among species crocus   Anything I could write about iris reticulata would pale in comparison to their awesome beauty. So instead, here are a few images from the past few years.   For such a tiny flower, they have the biggest punch! A few days ago, I wrote that early spring bulbs are the punk rockers of the spring garden. Art school dropouts with dyed hair, ready to get into a fight over who is hardier, in the middle of a snowstorm.   About twenty-ish years ago, we planted our first hundred iris reticulata, courtesy of Van Engelen . Talk about enabling! When you have a hundred of anything, you start thinking bigger. After you've planted a hundred bulbs, you ask yourself... what if I had four hundred more? What could I do with a huge wave of purple moving through the garden?   I should try to capture the wave of blue from atop a tall ladder or maybe...