Bulb Project - Phase 1: Planting

I have a bulb planting project this spring. In the past I focused on bulb planted in the fall that would then bloom in the early spring. This year my focus is on bulbs planted in the spring that will bloom in the summer…and summers to come.

The first bag contained 60 blazing stars (liatris spicata) that produce a spire of purple flowers that blooms in mid to late summer. The instructions said to plant the bulbs 5 inches apart and 4 inches deep. I used a big shovel to dig trenches along the back of the flower bed, just in front of the bushes. I planted as many as I could in that trench before using my hands to break up the clods of dirt as I refilled the depression. I ended up making several more trenches. 60 is quite a large number of bulbs! In between plantings - when my back did not want to be bending over any more, I used the nippers to trim the bushes a bit. In a little over an hour I’d planted the bulbs and filled a big trash bag of clippings from the bush and some weeds I’d pulled before I even started the bulb planting.

The bulbs were dried up brownish knobs packed loosely in wood shavings. Most of them had beginnings of roots on the fat end and a few had a tiny sprout on the pointed end. It was easy to tell which end should be planted up most of the time. I don’t think they’ll appear to be in a perfectly straight row when they come up but they’ll still look good in front of the bushes. The bushes are between 5 and 6 feet high so these flowers that can get up to 48 inches will be a nice stepwise progression from then. In front of the blazing stars there is some vigorous foliage of day lilies. I have some wire stakes around them because last year the deer invaded just before the buds opened; I had very few flowers! If they manage to bloom this year - the flowers will show up nicely against the lavender of the blazing stars.

The next day I planted 16 dahlia bulbs. The instructions said to plant them 1 inch deep and 12 inches apart. I dug some shallow holes before I opened up the bag. Surprise! Dahlias have big bulbs with multiple finger sized tubers with each one. It took bigger and deeper holes. Most of the bulbs had a healthy looking sprout that I could leave peeking up through the soil after I covered the rest with soil. The dahlias are positioned in the front of the flower bed since I plan to cut at least some of them for inside the house if they do well. I took time out to finish trimming the bushes behind my bulb bed too.

I am really looking forward to the flowers of summer!

Azaleas Are Blooming

The azaleas are blooming a bit early in Maryland this year but they aren’t past their peak…so you still have time to enjoy this aspect of spring if you live in the area. Brookside Gardens and the WSSC Brighton Dam Azalea Garden are my favorite places for azaleas. if you can't get there to see them for yourself --- enjoy the pictures below.

This first series of pictures is from Brookside Gardens on 4/7. There were still lots of bushes with buds still to open. I expect that there will be lots to see for at least another week. 

The pictures below are from 4/14 at the Brighton Dam Azalea Garden. They have even more bushes that are yet to reach peak bloom. The ones closest to the road are the ones most fully opened at present.

Also at Brighton Dam - there is a lovely dogwood on the path going left from the entrance. I’ll share dogwood pictures later this week.

Orchids

Orchids come is so many shapes and sizes. Aside from being interesting as flowers - they tend to remind me of other things.

My favorites are the slippers. See the pink one in the upper right - with the rounded toe and plush padding with long ties for around the ankle. And what about the green on the upper left with a more pointed toe. The lower left has the most pointed toe. And finally the white ones on the lower right - bridal slippers.

Next come the ruffles and frills…wrapped into shapes that can be trumpets or cornucopias. The edges of these petals remind us of party dresses and café curtains. It’s the edges that make the flower.

The last grouping reminds me of aliens…with full skirts and wild headdresses and appendages. Many of them grow in groups so the figures appear as if lined up for a parade (see the white ones in the middle left below).

The pictures were taken over the past six months at Brookside Gardens in Maryland and Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania. Enjoy!

Favorite Smells of Spring

What are you favorite smells of spring?

The smells I most strongly associate with spring are those that are outdoors.

Hyacinths. The scent of hyacinths is synonymous with early spring for me. The bulbs come up early and sometimes weather a last snow - as they did this year. A few times I’ve bought a pot of them to have indoors but most of the time I am content with smelling them on the March breeze.

Violets. We have wild violets that grow in the shade under our high deck. They bloom in April. You have to be in the right place to spell their scent on the air. They’re small and close to the ground but prolific bloomers so often I smell them before seeing them.

Lemon Balm. I planted a small pot of lemon balm years ago and now it takes over whole beds and grows out into the yard. It comes out very early and imparts its lemony smell whenever it is disturbed.

What are your favorite smells of spring?

Brookside in Early April

There was a Camellia Show at Brookside Gardens this past Saturday. I enjoyed walking through it and taking pictures. There are a number of aspects to the flowers that I was trying to capture: many yellow stamens, vein patterns in their petals, varying colors of the petals, and the slight variations of the petals themselves.

Many of the ferns had already unfurled with the earlier warmth this spring but there were still a few fiddleheads.

The tulips are also most their prime so I found myself looking at the color variations in their petals - like the purple and white below. And then there are other springtime flowers - Jack-in-the-Pulpits, wisteria, dogwood, azaleas and other bulbs. Spring has sprung!

History of Botanical Print Making - Online Examples

Botanical prints have been popular since the beginning of books. They were intended to be educational and often show dissections of flowers or seed pods. They are often beautiful works of art as well.

Many of these old books have been scanned and are accessible via the Internet. I’ve created a time ordered sequence below and pointed to where you can find the whole book of similar prints.

Published in 1484, Peter Schoeffer’s Herbarius latinus contains simple drawings like on the right. The drawings clearly could not be used by themselves to identify a plant. This book was created not that long after the printing press became more widely used (i.e. the Gutenberg Bible was made in the 1450s).

In 1487, Hamsen Schonsperger published Gart der Gesundheit. An example showing an Iris is on the left; the color is rather primitive.  The images are embedded with the text rather than being on separate pages.

Hieronymus Brunschwig’s Das Distilierbuoch came in 1521. It has some plain drawings and some colored. The plain drawings show more detail than earlier drawings although some parts seem stylized rather than reflecting of reality as shown in the grape vine representation on the right. This book also include manufacturing type diagrams...it is a 'how to' book.

In 1546, Kreüter Buch, darin Underscheid, Würckung und Namen der Kreüter so in Deutschen Landen wachsen by Hieronymus Bock was published. The strawberries are easily recognizable. The color is a little better than in the 1400s example.

Skipping ahead to 1788 when Joseph Gaertner published De frvctibvs et seminibvs plantarvm the attention to detail had increased even more. 

In 1805, William Hooker published 2 volumes of The paradisus londinensis:or coloured figures of plants cultivated in the vicinity of the metropolis with color representations. While these volumes were focused on plants near London - the 1800s were a time of plant exploration around the globe and the botanical prints of the era made those discoveries more widely known with their realistic portrayals.

In 1818, William Jackson Hooker published 2 volumes of Musci exotici - with renditions of mosses. 

The 2 volume Florae Columbiae by Hermann Karsten was published in 1869. 

Medizinal Pflanzen was published in 4 volumes in 1887. I picked the dandelion print for the example from this book (on the right). Note the way the illustrator sought to fit as much as possible about the plant onto a single page.

In 1904, Kunstformen der Natur was published by Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel. This book has a wide range of prints, not just botanical. The one of pitcher plant is shown at the left. 

In 1907, Alfred  Cogniaux published the many volumes of Dictionnaire iconographique des orchidees. The prints are lovely and grouped by the classification of orchids at the time. My favorite orchids are the slipper-like ones.

This is just a small sample of what is available. The two main repositories that I’ve used are Botanicus and the Biodiversity Heritage Library. Both have many more volumes of botanical prints than I've shown here and I encourage you to browse through them. Both repositories have a similar online viewing design. The frame along the left side of the book browsing window generally shows which pages have an illustration (marked 'illustration' or 'plate' or 'tab', for example) so it is possible to skip to the pages that include prints.

Enjoy!

Frosty Tulips at Brookside Gardens - April 2012

We had a frosty morning yesterday (April 3rd) here in Maryland and the tulips at Brookside Gardens still held the misty crystals when we got there. Enjoy my collage of pictures below…along with a rather scruffy looking robin.

The azaleas are also beginning to bloom at Brookside although not quite at their peak just yet.

March 2012 Doodles

I’ve scanned my favorite doodles from last month into a slide show (below). They’re made with gel pens on black paper in a spiral notebook that I found in my spring cleaning this year.

Doodling has no constraints. It doesn't have to look like anything at all. Sometimes it reflects what I'm thinking about - sometimes it is made on autopilot and reflects nothing at all. I've named the doodles after the fact and that is displayed at the bottom of each image. 

Previous doodle posts: 3/6

Around our (Maryland) Yard in April

It’s already April. We had some unseasonably warm days in March but now seem back into a more seasonable pattern. I took a walk around our yard this morning and created a montage of the pictures below.

So - the early April checkpoint for our yard here in Maryland is: The early bulbs (hyacinths, crocus and daffodils) are spent. The day lily leaves have recovered from the deer browsing so they may bloom normally later this spring. We have two tulips blooming in the same bed as the day lily greenery; the deer ate the rest down to the ground. The robins are very active and singing every morning. The maple samaras are about ready to fly - the lower branches have been thoroughly browsed by the deer so may 'self-prune' in upcoming months. The oak buds are popping from the top down. Our tulip poplar has a lot of spring green leaves and tight green flower buds all over. The iris green leaves are up already; they must be too tough for the deer since they don’t even have teeth marks. The tortoise that lives in that garden was out on one warm day but retreated when it got colder here during the past week; I didn't see him at all this morning. Our struggling azalea has a few blooms. 

Previous Months 

• March 2012
• January 2012

Gleanings of the Week Ending March 31, 2012

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles I read this past week:

Wind map - a (nearly) current map of winds in the continental US. This is an artwork and quite a learning opportunity for how the winds change over time...I find myself looking at it several times a day. 

Step inside the millennium seed bank - a video that walks through the science facility that stores seeds from 10% of the world’s plants

The Beginnings of Dr. Seuss - An Informal Reminiscence - A short piece done for Dartmouth (where he went to college) and made available online recently.

13 Nature Photos with water reflection - Enjoy! My favorite is the spoonbills (the second one).

Nature and Wildlife Photography Tips Center - from National Wildlife Federation

The Psychological Effects of Global Warming in the US - More people will experience weather extremes than ever before…and many more will develop anxiety disorders

Wind Farm in San Gorgonio - A striking picture of wind turbines in a pass in the mountains east of Los Angeles

Regular Chocolate Eaters are Thinner, Evidence Suggests - Just more data that supports my 2 squares of dark chocolate for breakfast habit!

How Animals See the World (infographic)

First Day of Spring (40 pictures) - From around the world

New inverter design shrinks size/cost of connecting solar panels to the grid - Company that created them will start selling them in May. Could shave $0.15/watt from a solar panel installation. There is a lot happening in the solar energy field right now. It's very exciting.

Re-inventing the toilet (turning human waste into power) - A Gates Foundation project. Watch the video.

April Celebrations

April is just about here. What is there to celebrate? Here are some ideas:

Wild Flowers. This is the time of year that many wild plants bloom; hikes to photograph then are a beautiful way to celebration spring. Don’t forget the flowering trees as well - dogwoods and redbuds are my favorites. Information about the wild flower festival in Smokey Mountain National Park can be found here. The one in Shenandoah National Park is planned for early May but the program schedule is already published and could be used to plan your own hikes in the park in late April.

Kites. March is the month most associated with kites but many communities hold kite festivals into April and early May when it is a bit warmer and still breezy.

Palm Sunday on the 1st, Good Friday and Passover on the 6th, and Easter on the 8th.  Observe the days in April that sustain your spiritual health.

Gardens. Formal gardens are greening in April too. Depending on the area of the country - there could be rows and rows of tulips or iris just getting ready to bloom of camelias. This time of year orchards are quite beautiful as well - full of blooms. Just as with the wild flowers - noticing the unfurling of spring is a great way to celebrate spring time.

Spring Break. Some schools have already taken a spring break…others have it early in April. A mini-vacation before the sprint to the end of the spring semester is always welcome. Celebrations can be as simple in a picnic in a local park on a warm day. In many parts of the country, showers are frequent in the spring so have a backup plan for if the day turns rainy and cool (or cold!).

Earth Day on the 22nd. Some communities have celebrations or festivals associated with Earth Day. One in my area is at Brookside Gardens.

Tulip Library in Washington DC - March 2012

When we went down to see the cherry blossoms last week - the tulips were blooming as well. The beds arch in an areas near the tidal basin at Independence Avenue and Maine Avenue. There are so many different kinds and colors. The two slide shows below show some of my favorites: the classic tulips, the ruffled petals, the fringed petals, the double and triple petals, the multi-colored...they were all there. 

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My all time favorite color combination in tulips is green and pink - like the 6th one above - although I'll have to admit the sunrise/sunset colors in the 7th one below comes in a close second. I guess this year the ruffle petals appealed to me too.

Maple Sequence - Spring 2012

The samaras are ripening on the maple in our backyard (Maryland). I started taking pictures of the buds in mid-February and have enjoyed continuing to photograph the tree as the samaras developed. They are drying now - having lost most of their rosy red color. Enjoy the collage of photos below! I’ll post again when the breezes swirl the samaras away from the tree.

Cherry Blossoms in Washington DC

Friday, March 23 was a great day to walk around the tidal basin in Washington DC to see the cherry blossoms. The fog of the days before was gone and the rain of the weekend was yet to come. Yes - there was still a lot of haze from moisture in the air that shows in longer shots and some of the petals had already started to drift down from the trees but the drifts on the ground still retained their light pink color. 

Hope you enjoy my photos! I took series at some of the monuments and a tulip garden that I’ll post over the next few days.

Quote of the Day - 03/22/2012

Lost cities, erased from living memory – for centuries even their names were forgotten.  After the splendors of their golden age, in the 9th century the Maya cities suffered the ravages of famine, war, and depopulation and then were finally abandoned.  The forest returned.  Roots wrapped themselves around the stelae, bringing them crashing to the ground.  Thrusting branches weakened the temple walls and forced their way through the roofs. - Claude Baudez and Sydney Picasso in Lost Cities of the Maya (Discoveries)

~~~~~

We tend to think of the buildings and houses we inhabit having a kind of permanence that they really don’t have. If we walked away - even buildings of stone would not last long. Would what we leave behind be enlightening to someone finding the ruins 1,000 years from now? Probably - but would their understanding resemble the way we think about ourselves at all?

Consider the people that left the Mayan ruins behind. Maybe many died in an epidemic or civil war…or maybe they simply rejected what the buildings represented and reverted to the way they lived before the stone edifices were built. We are curious about everything that has gone before us and the pieces of a puzzle that we may be able to solve holds our attention. It is the seeker in us that is keen to discover the secrets of the ruins in the forest.

I find the image of the forest ‘bringing them crashing to the ground’ fascinating by itself. It’s a good reminder - what a difference there is in biologic time (plant life times/our lifetimes) and geologic time. Our creations have a lifetime closer in length to our own.

Amaryllis

Two amaryllis bulbs were blooming in the Brookside Gardens Conservatory recently. I enjoyed creating a series of macro photos of both plants. The buds and flowers are quite large so the detail of the coloring is visible.

In the red flowers - I particularly like 

• The veins that carry the color (middle picture and upper right)
• The curves of the petals and buds (lower left and upper right)
• The green at the center that extends up the underside of each petal (upper right)
• The ruffling of the petals near the center (upper left and center)

The white flowers are more nuanced. In this series notice

• The pleats and puckering of the petals (lower right)
• The dots of red against the white (two lower photos)
• The extension of the green center to the tip of the petal’s underside (upper right)
• The sunlight through the petals (upper left)

Daffodils

The annual blooming of the daffodils is near its end in Maryland. They’ve bloomed alongside hyacinths - after the crocus and before the tulips. There are much larger numbers daffodils than any of the other spring bulbs. Everyone recognizes their familiar blooms.

The bulbs are planted in yards, along roadsides, at the edge of forests or rocky creeks…just about any place that is not swampy. Sometimes they are in small clumps, sometimes they make a neat row, sometimes it is easy to tell that small clumps have merged into an amoeboid shaped profusion of blooms. The daffodils seen frequently are all yellow or yellow and white. They can be miniature - a few inches high - to a foot high; the taller ones sometimes lean over after a rain because the water catches in the flower and makes it too heavy for the stem.

They bloom year after year with little tending. Their bulbs do not attract squirrels or other rodents so the gardener need only dig them up and enlarge the bed periodically to keep them from getting too crowded - it’s easy to tell when this needs to be done because they stop blooming as profusely.

Brookside Gardens - March 12, 2012

The weather was sunny and warm this week. Brookside Gardens is brightening with some spring blooms - daffodils, crocus, cherries, deciduous magnolias and miniature iris. There were a few hyacinths but not the profusion of previous years. The tulips are not blooming yet although their leaves are growing and the display should be quite lush once they start blooming.

A pair of mallards swam on one pond and a lot of turtles  were very active swimming in another - playing their springtime tag.

Parsley in the Kitchen Window

I bought a small pot of Italian parsley at the grocery store this week. This gives me greenery to enjoy now and then put in a large pot on the deck to enjoy all summer. The small shelf above my sink is the perfect place for it - there is great afternoon sun and I’ll notice when it needs to be watered. The store had similar pots of basil and cilantro. I have some basil seeds and decided to plant them (another small project for today). The cilantro plants looked too fragile; maybe I’ll get one some other week.

I’ve enjoyed Italian parsley previously. The plant tends to be hardy (as long as it gets enough water) and rapidly replenishes the amount I cut. I like it in salads, sprinkled on top of soups/stir fries, or in a veggie smoothie. The leaves are even large enough to use on a sandwich!

Quote of the Day - 03/07/2012

The old stone house, solid, substantial, and unadorned, suggested unlimited spaciousness and comfort within; and was redeemed from positive ugliness without, by the fine ivy, magnolia trees, and wisteria, of many years' growth, climbing its plain face, and now covering it with a mantle of soft green, large white blooms, and a cascade of purple blossom. - Florence L. Barclay in The Rosary

~~~~~

Ivy covered stone….as appealing now as it was in the early 1900s when Barclay wrote. Sometimes the appeal carries over to the inside of the building if the windows become partially covered as well. Several years ago I toured a law library and the main thing I remember was the greenish color of the light coming through the large windows at  both ends of the long narrow room. The space felt more like an outdoor bower than an enclosed, climate controlled room. The ivy was almost covering the windows…transmitting the light.

Ivy can damage walls after many years. Wisteria does not take as long to do damage and most of the time you see it on an arbor rather than a wall for that reason. The tendrils grow into any little nook and then expand. They tend to take their support apart. My mother once planted trumpet vine next to a fence because she liked the color of its flowers then separated it from the stockade fence with chicken wire for its support and trimmed it frequently to keep the fence intact when it became apparent how damaging the trumpet vine could be.