Happy Flower Friday!
There are 23 days until Spring!
This week Lorraine sent photos of her lovely amaryllis:
Well if these amaryllis don't cheer you up, nothing will!
This morning I woke up thinking about gardening chores. Oh sure, there's still a foot and half of snow outside, but one can plan right? Weed, place the new soaker hoses I ordered in January, thin layer of compost, mulch after the first rain and oh most of all, what I'm going to plant this year!
My seed order came in earlier this month. I'm feeling nostalgic so I ordered a lot of seeds that I used to grow in my garden but faded with time or I just stopped resowing.
Two of my favorites: moonflowers and four o'clocks. Have you ever grown them? You need to soak the seeds before you plant them but they are well worth the effort. They are both wonderfully fragrant!
Moonflowers open at dusk and you can literally watch them unfold in what seems to be a miraculous show.
Moonflowers are like Four O'Clock flowers. They both open in the evening and rely on moths and other evening bugs to pollinate them. (Four O'Clocks open without the showiness of moonflowers). That's why the fragrance is so important.
It's been so long since I have grown four o'clocks that I can't even find a photo of them. My nana loved them because they grew them in the coal regions to disguise the sulphur smell from the mines. You can google them to see all the different colors!
Have a safe and happy day and enjoy the longer days that are happening!
One of my step daughters has amazing luck with moonflowers and I pass some in my neighbors yards. Not a plant for a small garden! Four o'clocks were a neighborhood favorite and as kids we'd like to collect the black seeds.
ReplyDeletegorgeous rich red amaryllis....so lovely...must get one for next winter...
ReplyDeletewhen I was a little girl visiting my grandmother in NM, I used to run outside at 4:00 to see if I could see the flowers open. I thought if they were called 4:00 o clocks that exactly at that time, they should open up. I don't even know what they look like anymore.
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