My goodness it's been a long time since I've written in here. I could blame the insanely busy school year, but World of Warcraft (the new video game Cat and I are playing) gets some credit too. With all this stuff going on, we haven't had too much chance to try out new meals. It has been old, and easy, comfort food of late. Lots of BocaTM burgers with corn on the cob and potato soup for us. We do have a new, and easy, vegetable fajita recipe but I'll leave that for a later post. Today I will talk about the flowers in our yard.
Cat and I put in some bulbs last fall. It's the first time we've seriously put in bulbs from a landscaping point of view. We did put a bunch in the brick flower boxes at the old place but that doesn't really count in my mind for some reason. Maybe it's because there were supposed to be flowers there.
In any case, we put a few hundred bulbs in last fall running along the fence and right in front of the house by the steps. Most of those bulbs have been coming up this spring. Some sad sad bulbs decided to come up during a warm spell this winter and got themselves a very rude surprise. In addition to the bulbs we planted, there have been some nice surprises in the yard. Apparently someone planted a bunch of bulbs at some point and all the flowers were gone by the time we moved into the house last summer. Either that or all the flowers were keeping their heads down for fear of the old wiring resulting in a fireball.
Of the flowers we have planted, daffodils and tulips have begun to bloom. Unfortunately I only have a picture of the daffodils at the moment. The tulips came up over the last few days and there is a nice variety of red, orange and white. We have a whole army of them that came up along the west fence that haven't bloomed yet. I'm expecting them to look quite good. You might want to click on these pictures to get a better view.
As I mentioned, we have a number of surprises in the yard that we weren't expecting. There are a number of daffodils coming up around the yard. We have a few coming up next to the grape vines. These are right next to the door and the dogs love them. I somehow doubt the feeling is mutual.
We also have a large bunch of daffodils coming up right next to the blackberry vines. The dogs don't seem to like these as much. I think the thorny blackberries and the daffodils have some sort of symbiotic arrangement. I have yet to figure out what the blackberries get out of it. I kept going back and forth on whether or not I should take the blackberries out. On one hand, they are a very invasive weed growing close to the house. On the other hand, they make blackberries. In the end, I was never next to them with a clippers and some spare time on my hands so they will get at least one more summer.
The yard also has a nice collection of purple and white wildflowers in the lawn. I've seen this sort of thing in a few yards around here. It looks very nice. I've been thinking of asking around to see if there is a way to encourage more of these to grow.
We also have this clump of surprise daffodils and crocuses in the front by the steps. These appear to have been growing thick for a number of years. I have a friend in Physics who is good with plants and landscaping. He has said that you need to dig things like this up and split up the bulbs. Digging up bulbs to just replant at the end of every couple years offends my sensibilities somehow. I want to plant bulbs and have them come up forever with little or no maintenance. Maybe if I was to plant roses? You just need to hack those back every once and a while, no?
Finally, we've a bunch of these purple things coming up in the front by the steps. I originally thought I had planted them, but I've found them in a couple of other places in the yard where I do not think I planted anything. When I dug up this section in the front, I dug into a bunch of bulbs that were already there. I think these are some of those I dug up. Note my attractive dead leaf mulch that I put in last fall. This stuff didn't turn out looking as nice as I would have hoped. I may have to consider real mulch next year.
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