Laughing Ravens

At the end of the day, what needs to be written about bulbs? Every garden has some. Every gardener has their favorite. There's always some bulb which fails to perform as illustrated in the catalog or website. So why bother writing about them? It's been done to death. Every garden writer has extolled the virtues of bulbs. For me, bulbs are the gateway drug. Not a huge investment in money or time, or even for that matter space in the garden... you get an enormous return. Most importantly, you see the payoff at the most crucial time of the year, during the grey/mud season of spring. Without bulbs, spring is spent waiting for trees to leaf out and for perennials to wake up. Bulbs give us that splendid wake up call, announcing "Spring can now begin!" For a little more than ten bucks you can get one heck of a thrill! Years ago, we planted a few chionodoxa and scilla siberica in a long bed. They performed well. Life happened, and the bed became ignored. Health issues arose. ...

 I've spent a fair bit of time over the last three days, wandering through the garden. With highs barely hitting the mid 40's, rain and wind making it feel much colder... it was tough to want to be outside. I spent last week running my second conference of the year. Despite the exhaustion, all I really wanted was to be outside among the plants and the birds.    Photo of iris reticulata, from Wendy Roller, irisarian extraordinaire (GRIS) This afternoon, the sun appeared long enough that it warmed slightly. Taking advantage of the light and leaving the camera behind for the day, meant getting close enough to get dirty. A few weeds, here and there, were pulled. Easy stuff with the soil wet from the last few days of rain. I don't understand people who try to weed their garden when the soil is dry. Way too much like work.  In an attempt to leave myself some breadcrumbs for a yearly almanac of what happens in the garden and where... I hope to record a few of the standout t...

it's easy to miss    Sometimes, I find myself asking, "What did I miss?"  I look over my shoulder to see where I have been, then I look in front of me and wonder how I got there. I feel like I have missed something. Some part of the journey. Not quite like I have been asleep, but maybe asleep at the wheel.  When I was married to my ex-wife, my music collection stopped growing. She had the smallest collection of music of anyone I have ever known. She had fewer than a dozen tapes. No CDs. She didnt even listen to the radio. It was either her version of folk music or nothing. When I say her version, she was adamant that the only musician on that list were people like Bill Staines, Fred Small, Peter Paul and Mary, Pete Seeger... a very limited set of folk musicians. I figured if she liked that, she was sure to like traditional Irish and Scottish tunes. Nope. I tried again with more modern American folk musicians. Strike two. Our marriage fell apart while I was in grad sc...

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...

When faced with the bleak dreary skies of January, it is easy to want to fast-forward into April when blooms start to appear in the garden again. Let me rephrase that. There are two faces of winter. One face is sun-shiny and snow blankets the countryside. The other gives you a side-eye, pelts you with ice pellets, and hides the sun behind thick, unmoving clouds for weeks. You'd never guess that I love winter.  The local expression for this kind of snow is "Ithacation." It consists primarily of sideways snow and ice that nearly always finds a way inside your collar and into your ears.  Every few years we are gifted with the Norman Rockwell "winters of year's past"... and the sky opens up, dumps feet of snow on us and then the sun comes out and everything is still for a brief moment.  So how is one to deal with the interminable time between the rich colors of fall and the ebullient outbursts of color in spring? Around here, that can extend from November well i...