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Showing posts with label colchicum. Show all posts
Showing posts with label colchicum. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 22, 2020

The Autumnal Equinox

 “Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.”

― Terry Pratchett


Oy Vey.......this year. I don't even really know what to say at this point, the flower bulbs season was good and then it was over and even more hell broke loose then covid. My beloved santiam canyon burnt to the ground, fueled by a freakish September Wind storm, the likes of which I've never seen in my 40 years here,  filling the valley with air so toxic it couldn't be measured with the standard metric chart. For days it was like living on Mars, the voles were out in the middle of the day because it was so dark that it seemed like perpetual twilght, I watched the cat catch 7 of them in the half hour after noon.  When the non stop lightning storm finally ushered in the rain and washed out the air, Ruth Bader Ginsburg died. I sit here feeling like I'm doing that brainstorm exercise in that writers workshop I took when I got divorced, the one where the instructor said write down 3 random ideas and then connect them with a string of consiousness. This feels almost made up, but it actually happened and it's been that kind of a year where you just seem to be saying it can't possibly get any worse but it does get worse and then it gets worse than that and then it gets worse than that. 

If it weren't for the flowers it would be even darker. 

Zephyranthes grandiflora

Colchicum 'Rosy Dawn'

Gladiolus in the border

Crocosmia in the late summer flower beds

Colchicum variegatum

The gladiolus as the sunsets on the autumnal equinox

So I walked around on the equinox and took some photo's of a few flower bulbs blooming in the garden, the rain has freshened thing up a bit and the green is starting to return to the landscape with the cooler nights now. 

Mark

Friday, September 28, 2018

After the Autumnal Equinox Comes


"Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there." Ray Bradbury Farenheit 451


 So I took a long walk around the garden this past evening, I had meant to put up a post on the flowers of the autumnal equinox as I have done in the past. But somehow time slipped by me and almost a week has past since we hit that perfect moment where day and night are equal in length.

So all the pictures in these two collages were taken on evening of September 27 when the length of day is now 11 hours and 52 minutes. And tomorrow it will be 3 minutes and 6 seconds shorter.
I really just focused on the Autumn Crocus and Colchicum that are in bloom, although I could have found a few more flowers if I had pushed the issue. I like the shades of lavender and pink, it seems to be a subdued color pallette for the coming of winter, almost as if the flowers are telling you it's time to fade away from the bright neon glow of summers Petunia's bedded en masse. Time to take a closer look at the intricate details of the flowers that will soon fade away with the first hard frost, and won't be seen again until the days once again begin to lengthen. I really wish I wasn't writing in memorandums here every so many months, but it's come to that point in life where the good friends and relatives are aging out.


In Loving Memory:
Oh to walk down those racks of vintage's in glass in the little Chelsea Lane store, near the duck pond in Bend where Auntie Raissa made her place. Thank you for so many memories from Pacifica and the Packaging Store, to Bend and Chelsea Lane. You may not have left a garden for your soul to rest at, but you left me so many precious memories I'll never forget you. Rest in Peace and may your soul be free.



Tuesday, September 8, 2015

Last minute orders

I'll be wrapping up bulb sales this weekend. So get any last minute orders in now. The fall bloomers are ready to go!

Sunny and warm after some spotty weekend showers.

Cheers,
Mark

Saturday, August 22, 2015

Harvest is done

A good harvest of some choice minature narcissus this year will really help you fill the gaps on bloom time. Illahe offers species that are ultra early (December) flowering, middle and late bloomers as well.
The pots are all harvested and im going through the bins now, so the catalog will be any day. Expect the usual excellent selection of Fritillaria, a variety of fall blooming colchicum and crocus from the sativus group as well as a selection of wild collected western bulb seed.