Several of these beautiful things greeted me today. Try if you can to resolve this mass of frilly petticoats into a daffodil -- it really is one. By far the silliest daffodil I've ever bought, and it is just a big ball of cheerful on a stick out there in the (fantastically well-raked) flowerbed, as you can see.It's daffodil "Replete," to be precise... and it's supposed to be PINK! Haven't figured that out yet. Mom says sometimes they change color after they've been open a few days, so I'll watch it. My theory is the alkaline soil leached it yellow :)
So all the bulbs I planted this fall have at least come up. I missed the dwarf iris, which nearly breaks my heart -- owing to work pressure, daylight savings and a couple other issues, I barely saw the garden at all in February, and I think that's when they bloomed, because when I did get out there I saw the spent brown post-floral husks. Sigh!
I did hit every single bulb with the Magic Rabbit Poo (Buds N Blooms) a couple weeks ago. And the roses as well -- all the roses survived the winter of many freezes and total neglect. (You wondered why it's called the Darwin Garden? They don't.) The roses, in fact, are all glossy-leafed out with the flush of new growth that always happens right before the aphids hit. Sigh.
For the record, here's what got planted in the fall, each with bloom time and quantity:
| CYCLAMINEUS DAFFODIL PROTOTYPE | Mar-May | 5 | |
| DOUBLE DAFFODIL REPLETE | Mar-Apr ✓ | 5 | |
| DUTCH IRIS BLUE PEARL | May (✓Apr!) | 15 | |
| DWARF ROCKGARDEN IRIS (Iris reticulata) | Feb-Apr ✓ | 25 | |
| SKY BLUE LILIES (Ixiolirion pallasii) | May-Jun | 25 |
I checked off the ones that have already bloomed. We'll see if the rest do as well!
Also today, very exciting: Saw the first yellow-rumped warbler I have ever seen. He was polite enough to spend a full two minutes flitting around the cedar elm branches that are right outside our bedroom window, and if I hadn't been looking from that high position, I might have never seen his identifying feature: His bright yellow diamond where his back tapers into his tail! Without that, he would have looked like any of our gabillions of other LBBs (little brown birds). And indeed I think he was an immature, or maybe a she, because he had no other yellow on him -- no yellow wing or breast patches or crown, as are shown in some pictures.
But what a little cutie, and he obligingly hopped from branch to branch trilling his pleasant little song until he'd cleaned every single bug off our cedar elm. Cutie McCutepants!
