Why I Oughta...

Just a few days ago, I posted photos of what I think is the earliest emergence of the tips of Hellebores in our backyard and talked about how I'm not sure what is driving this early Spring .  When I was out front, I noticed that there are other things *already* moving in the garden.  Specifically...some tulips.  Down in the little bed wedged in between the sidewalk, our driveway and the property line are some tulips that were planted in Fall of 2021.  Last year was their first season and I noted their emergence in early March .  So - just like with the Hellebores - this is about three weeks earlier than last year.  Here, below, is a peek at some of the tulip foliage that has sprung up.   H ere's a look at where these bloomed last season .   These are MOST LIKELY going to need a little protection from getting trampled by the kids and neighbors and their dogs.  I looked in a few other spots - around the parkway tree and underneath the...

The Orange Big Box story has their Spring bulbs already in stock in their greenhouse.  That means, Peonies and Dahlias and Elephant Ears and Gladiolas are packed in sets and ready to go home.  Of course, I couldn't help to go over and see what they had on hand and came across this six-pack of orange Tiger Lily bulbs for $9.98. Tiger Lilies are both familiar and foreign to me.  I feel like I know them, but the reality is....I don't really.  I went online to find a few listings for bulbs and learned a bit - like... these are 'downward-facing' and good for cut-flowers .   But, one of the things that I wasn't sure of is how these are treated:  as annuals (like a Dahlia tuber that is left in the ground) or as a perennial (like an Allium bulb)?  Based on this listing from Longfield Gardens, it seems they're 'hardy down to Zone 4' , which leads me to believe they can be left in the ground and come back year-after-year like an Allium bulb?  The label...

 Yesterday, I posted how I planted 57 new tulip bulbs (yellow, orange and white ones) in our front yard bed outside of our front porch.  The yellow was added to balance the color, the orange was planted to bring the count of orange ones up to par and I added a little white - just because.  Today, I'm sharing the rest of the tulip bulbs that I picked up for the backyard.  I decided to go with a purple and yellow (and a little white) color combination for the backyard.  In doing a little bit of digging around, I've found that tulips and hostas are good companion plants.  I've (mostly) planted my hostas in shaded areas - shaded by decidious trees that gain their leaves in Spring - and the tulips will come out early and the hostas, when they emerge, will hide the declining foliage of the tulips.   In late June, I dug up, divided and transplanted about a dozen variegated hostas in and around the large 31" Red Oak tree in our backyard .   Fir...

  Over the weekend, I planted these 57 tulip bulbs in the front bed - underneath the Norway Maple tree outside of our front porch.  This post shows the location of the current tulips from this Spring.  The important bulbs to note in this post are the yellow ones in the middle.  If you recall this post from back in May of 2019, I mentioned how Amy @ Pretty Purple Door said that adding yellow will balance out the red/orange combo .   The tulips that I added are: 28 Yokohama Single Early Yellow Tulips . 15 Darwin Oxford Elite Orange Tulips .  These remind me of the Disneyland Rose. And 14 white (first time adding white to this bed) Purissima (Emperor) Tulips . I originally planted 50 tulip bulbs in this bed.  30 pink/red Crystal Beauty bulbs.  And 20 orange Double Princess tulips. The counts now are: 25 red/pink bulbs 35 orange bulbs 28 yellow bulbs 14 white bulbs 107 total bulbs planted.  But, I know not all of them are still there - due ...

The very first tips of some of our Spring bulbs have started to poke through the mulch.  This is a tulip bulb in our front beds that are covered with cocoa bean hull mulch.  Which...now that I'm looking at this photo - sure looks pretty great.  The cocoa bean mulch is a rich, dark brown and composed of small flakes that are both breaking down, but not disappearing.  Compare the color to the few pieces of bark/wood that are in the bed and you can see how the color is much deeper in the cocoa bean mulch. These bulbs are the same ones that I documented last Spring - but later in March . One of the biggest problems that I have this time of year in this area is keeping these from getting stepped on.  This bed is in between our house and the neighbors whom the girls spend time with.  It is easy to trample these tips if they're not careful.  These are the red and orange tulips that I told myself I needed to augment with yellow .  But...I didn't en...

Last year I added some tropical flair to our patio containers by planting a series of elephant ear bulbs in the pots.  They complemented various flowers and we mostly had good luck with them.  Here's a look at the bulbs - 12 of them - that went in .  I ran out of room in containers, so I put a couple in the ground, too!  By July, they were starting to help fill in our containers .   By August, they were in full form and provided a beautiful, almost trippy look in our containers .  I was really happy with them and figured I'd use them again in our containers.  So, I picked up this three pack of standard Elephant Ear bulbs.  These are smaller than the ones we put in last year, so perhaps the leaves will be smaller?  But, why just redo what we did last year, right?  I had one "Black Magic" Elephant Ear in a container with some Night Queen Mini Dahlias last year and it seemed to grow nicely despite being constrained for sp...