A Little Gratuitous Garden Porn

Okay, we're six days into February, which means we're more than halfway through winter. Let's have a look on what I see out my back (deck) doors, shall we? 

No, your eyes do not deceive you. Yes, there is snow drifted up PAST the doorknob now. I stress that this is drifted, not complete snowfall. Overall, we're guessing that there's somewhere around 3 feet in snowfall accumulation in the past several weeks. In some places it's much deeper than that, such as around the back door. So I decided that it was time for a little winter-denial, or winter escape, at least temporarily. 

I love tulips. Absolutely love them provided they're planted in drifts or clusters, rather than straight lines. Like my colours more or less together, rather than speckled here and there. 

One of my favourite types of tulips are the viridifloras, those with green among the colours in the petals. This is 'Greenland'. 

The fringed tulips make me very happy, but I'm not entirely sure which one this is. Sometimes they come back for a couple of years, and sometimes they simple suffer from Lost Label syndrome. 

Not only do the big showy tulips float my boat, I love the species tulips, which are smaller, less showy, hardier, and inclined to multiply over years. I planted these Tulipa tarda bulbs years ago, and they come up every spring, regular as clockwork. 

If my notes are correct, this fringed tulip is 'Carousel', but I have been trying to confirm that with minimal success. I love the delicate fringing on the edges, the flames of red along the creamy-yellow petals. 

The double or peony-flowered tulip 'Uncle Tom' is one of the darkest purple-red (even with sun shining on it). 

Most of the reason I'm so fond of tulips has to do with the way their petals react with light, but I also love their orderly colourful selves. I tend to go for the jewel-hued tulips rather than too many pastel types, and to shun the red-and-yellow mixes that you see sold cheaply at discount stores and from catalogues aiming to make a quick buck. 

These behaved very strangely last year. This is 'Jackpot', an ordinary tulip (I thought), chosen for its deep purple petals edged in white. Instead of getting a dozen flowers from a dozen bulbs, we ended up with somewhere around two dozen or more flowers, in all sizes from crocus to regular tulip blossom size. I have no idea what happened. Since most tulips tend to be annual here (with the exception of some Triumphs, Darwins, and the species tulips), I don't know whether we'll see any of these this spring or not. It was definitely a strange occurrence. 

See what I mean? Have you ever had something like this happen?

Even when they are done, tulips have their own beauty in their exhausted petals. This is the remains of 'Apricot Parrot', I believe, one of my very favourite tulips of all time. Its flowers go through most of the spectrum of the rainbow, with green, gold, apricot pink and even hints of red in the petals as the flower matures. In our garden, tulips begin in early May, but the coolness of our springs means that we routinely have them still blooming into early summer: as in the middle of June. That seems like a long way from now, but the good thing is, I'll get to enjoy most of YOUR tulips via your blogs between now and then. We'll make it through!