Tangled Branches: Cultivated
happenings in and around my zone 6b gardens in northern Virginia and in central Virginia
Sunday, March 14, 2010
First Flowers and Fragrance
Nature cut us some slack and provided two gloriously warm days this week. That's all it took for the frustrated crocus (see previous post) to burst into bloom. And it brought some of its friends with it.
I was so busy working in the garden this week that I didn't spend much time admiring the garden. To that end - and this is something I need to do more often - I brought some flowers indoors to appreciate up close. The players here are Crocus tommasinianus 'Ruby Giant' (dark purple), Crocus sieberi 'Firefly' (pale blue-purple), Crocus chrysanthus 'Cream Beauty', Iris reticulata 'Gordon', and Galanthus nivalis (the common snowdrop).
I wanted to say a few words about the scent of each of these, but then realized my descriptive skill for fragrance isn't up to the task. This is the case with most people who haven't actively educated themselves about scent. To quote from a fascinating article from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute:
The average human being, it is said, can recognize up to 10,000 separate odors. We are surrounded by odorant molecules that emanate from trees, flowers, earth, animals, food, industrial activity, bacterial decomposition, other humans. Yet when we want to describe these myriad odors, we often resort to crude analogies: something smells like a rose, like sweat, or like ammonia.
Our culture places such low value on olfaction that we have never developed a proper vocabulary for it. In A Natural History of the Senses, poet Diane Ackerman notes that it is almost impossible to explain how something smells to someone who hasn't smelled it. There are names for all the pastels in a hue, she writes—but none for the tones and tints of a smell.
So for now, let me just say that Iris reticulata 'Gordon' has a pleasant, slightly sweet scent. Same for the snowdrops, but a different pleasant, slightly sweet scent. I didn't get much fragrance from either 'Cream Beauty' or 'Firefly', but 'Ruby Giant' crocus has a pleasant, but faint scent. There. How was that? Pretty feeble? I agree. I'm going to work on it.
But you know what was the best thing I smelled this week? Fresh Air! I dried bath towels outdoors in the sun and, on the warmest day, opened the house windows wide. I think spring is really here.
Labels: crocus, in bloom, iris, snowdrops
Friday, February 06, 2009
Snowdrops!
Kicking off the season of spring bulbs. A bit late this year, but January was the 18th coldest on record.
From the National Weather Service climate summary:
AT DULLES...THE JANUARY 2009 AVERAGE MONTHLY TEMPERATURE WAS BELOW NORMAL...THE 18TH COLDEST ON RECORD...AND THE COLDEST JANUARY SINCE 2004. 18 OUT OF 31 DAYS THIS JANUARY AVERAGED BELOW NORMAL.
THE MINIMUM TEMPERATURE OF ZERO DEG F ON THE 17TH WAS THE LOWEST MIN TEMPERATURE RECORDED AT DULLES SINCE FEB 6 1996 WHEN IT WAS -9 DEGF.
JANUARY 2009 MONTHLY PRECIPITATION WAS SLIGHTLY BELOW NORMAL AS WELL WITH NEARLY HALF OF THE MONTHLY PRECIPITATION FALLING ON THE 7TH.
THE 19TH WAS THE ONLY DAY WITH MEASURABLE SNOWFALL FOR THE MONTH. THE SNOW TOTAL OF 2.0 INCHES WAS OVER 6 INCHES BELOW NORMAL. OVERALL THIS IS THE 9TH JANUARY IN A ROW WITH BELOW NORMAL SNOWFALL.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
An Ice Surprise
As late as yesterday afternoon, the Weather Service assured us that the freezing rain was nothing to worry about because the temperature was soon going to get warmer.
By the time we returned home from dinner, the Weather Service had issued an Ice Storm Warning. It rained all night and the backyard looked like this until midafternoon today.
The crocuses look worse for the wear, but the snowdrops shrugged it off. They were happy and upstanding as soon as they were freed from the ice.
Labels: ice, snowdrops, weather
Friday, February 08, 2008
Next Crocus
Crocus ancyrensis (meaning of or from Ankara) 'Golden Bunch'. The flowers are on the small side, but the gold color is intense. Here's another picture of them in their native habitat, where they apparently bloom in March, or did in 2006 anyway. Those flowers look larger than mine, but it's hard to compare. There's an acorn cap in my photo (and we don't have any humongous acorns) so you can get an idea of the flower size. They may be smaller than they could be, owing to the fact they're planted right next to that oak tree in an area where the birds like to scratch and feed. Squirrels too. One of the problems I have with this crocus is that the squirrels like to chew off the flowers.
I noticed in the Turkish photo some interesting seed pod remnants, looking something like Lunaria, but much smaller. Wonder what those are....
The crocuses I showed you earlier are finally doing their bunching thing after our absurdly warm weather this week. Prior to that they were only opening one or two flowers each day.
And lastly, the Galanthus nivalis snowdrops are starting to bloom. These were newly planted a couple of years ago and they seem happy in this spot. Keeping my fingers crossed on that.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Snowdrop Update and Blog Tinkering
Thought I'd show you how the snowdrops fared after my Bloom Day post.
We got a surprise snowstorm on Thursday - about 4 or 5 inches. Oh well.......it is winter.
Shirl kindly provided a link to a video showing how to plant snowdrops in-the-green, and that got me started snowdrop surfing. I turned up some interesting web pages. Several of these mention Hitch Lyman, who is seemingly the only purveyor of snowdrops in-the-green in the US. If you know of any others, please share.
- Cold Climate Kathy's post about snowdrops and Hitch Lyman prompted me to send for his catalog a couple of years ago.
- Last March the Washington Post's garden editor wrote about snowdrops, Hitch Lyman, and The March Bank at Winterthur.
- The Transatlantic Plantsman has a photo of a very enviable stand of snowdrops - escaped from cultivation. Maybe that's the secret - toss them in a ditch and see what grows.
I've been doing some tinkering around the edges of the blog. My right-column blogroll had gotten very out of sync with my reading habits - I had been using Bloglines but came to prefer Google Reader and so didn't keep the Bloglines list up-to-date. I'm still working on merging the two lists. And I changed the format to try to make it easier to read, but that typeface looks rather small to my aging eyes.
Yesterday while looking for something else, I came across a snippet of Blogger template code to display the name of each commenter on the main page (i.e. you don't have to click the "comment" link to see who has commented). I tried it out, but I'm not sure whether I like it or not. One of the things I don't like is that the commenter's name isn't linked to the comment, but to the commenter's Blogger profile page (or some other web page in the case of non-Blogger commenters). We're getting into the political season here in the US and polls are all the rage everywhere, so how about helping me decide this issue?
Labels: blogroll, snow, snowdrops, template
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day
It's Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day, and instead of propping up some past-prime annuals (like last time), I have fresh new flowers to show. How many flowers? 10.5 (one of them got chewed in half). All from the same clump of snowdrops. 
Why this clump is consistently early, I can't say. I have others of the same species (Galanthus elwesii) very nearby, but they'll bloom much later. A couple of years ago, I decided I'd increase the snowdrops with checkbook horticulture and planted another group not too far from these. They came up and bloomed the first year and then disappeared.
So that's it for this GBBD. Thanks, Carol, for this great idea and being a wonderful host.
PS. You should have seen what I had blooming last Janaury 15.
Tuesday, January 08, 2008
Snowdrops!
Well, they're not quite in bloom yet, but getting close.
You shouldn't get the idea that the ground is carpeted with these here. This one particular clump blooms earlier than any others here. Check below for the overall effect as it appears to normal people.
I heard a cardinal singing when I went out to get the newspaper this morning. If I could speak cardinal, I would have told him "Save your breath. You're way too early, pal."
Labels: snowdrops
Back to Work with Earlier Sunrises
The 12 Days of Christmas are over and it's back to the salt mines for me. If we were all living in a time and place where the holidays kept going until January 6, the return to work would happen at about the same date when the sun begins to rise earlier (at about 40 degrees N latitude). Is this a coincidence?
We've been gaining daylight at the end of the day since early December here, and the sun is setting about 15 minutes later now than it was then. Now it's time for the days to lengthen at the end and the beginning. But human arbitrariness has intruded once again on the natural rhythm of things. While I was cruising the internet looking for interesting links about the latest sunrise, I found this interesting observation: because the end of Daylight Saving Time was moved to the first weekend in November in 2007, we actually had our latest sunrise in official government-approved clock time in early November. In the vicinity of Washington DC, the sun rose at 7:36 AM on November 3, and today rises at 7:26 AM.
As Chuck B. has gently reminded me in a comment on the previous post, the Earth's orbit around the Sun isn't really a circle, but an ellipse. Because of that slightly squished circle (OK, ellipse) we're closer to the Sun now than we will be in June. I realize that this fact has nothing whatever to do with the current weather, but yesterday felt like spring break instead of back-to-work. And it isn't just here. Tornados in northern Illinois in January?!?!? I can hardly imagine such a thing, probably because the last time anything like that happened was before I was born. I sure hope Edwards Apple Orchard is able to recover from the damage - in addition to excellent apples and cider, they have some of the best cider donuts ever.
Meanwhile, the benign side of springtime is almost on display here. The snowdrops were just showing a few pointy green leaves last week, but now the flower buds are clearly visible. Pictures later - it's still dark as I type this. Those earlier sunrises will be very welcome.
Labels: astronomy, seasons, snowdrops, weather
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
Snowdrop Watch
Starting the new year off right, I'm late to my own Snowdrop Watch. They were showing color on December 29, and by January 2 they were blooming. This is the same clump that bloomed last year around January 22, and in 2005, around January 13.
