Life lately

I had a bad dream the other night. I can't remember it, but when I woke up I was worried about my dad. He's turning 70 this weekend. I need to spend time with him. Incidentally, today, we were just standing in the office talking, and I thought about how nice it was. In times before, I might have been irritated if he interrupted me in something, but now I think I'm going to stop and stand up and enjoy our little conversations.

Lately I've been listening to the podcast History of Philosophy without any gaps. It starts at the beginnings of recorded philosophy and tries to go through everything, not just the big names. I'm liking it so far. I just finished the pre-Socratics today and am about to start with Socrates.

This weekend I finished reading Franny and Zooey by J. D. Salinger. A friend gave it to me for my birthday. I'm not sure what to make of it yet, but I did have an emotional response. I miss my friend.

I'm still in the process of repotting daffodils. I'm discovering that some of the dormant bulbs are in very moist conditions, even though they're in clay pots that haven't received any water in weeks. What this means is that next year, as soon as the foliage withers, I'm moving the pots where they don't get any water all summer long. Some of the bulbs are rotting. Interesting also is that some of the bulbs seem completely dormant and have no roots, while others have enormous root systems that still look active. Why does the bulb need so many roots while it is dormant, and why is it only on some daffodils and not others? I've noticed that it's mostly on daffodils of tazetta ancestry that have the most roots, the jonquillas have a few roots, and others have little or no roots.

I'm also considering using bonsai soil for my daffodils in the future. It has a consistency more like gravel and I hope will help with the rotting issue. I've potted a few herbaceous plants in the bonsai soil, such as Salvia 'Anthony Parker', which I was surprised to see took to the soil immediately, although it needs to be watered twice a day since the soil is so gravel-like and water moves right through it. I don't think this will be as much of an issue with Mediterranean bulbs such as daffodils.

Pumping Gas

I don't even know how to process all that has gone on lately. If you were to ask me a year ago what life would be like now, I would never have guessed. A year ago seems like two or three years ago. Three or four months ago seems like another decade. Time seems like it's flying by so fast, too.

I was pumping gas at the Grub Mart on Gay & Glenn the other day. Standing there, I thought about how this place connected so many memories and people. I used to walk there to buy pop tarts when I was a sophomore. That was over a decade ago. In the intervening time, the place became associated with different people I had been with there, in totally different circumstances. Most of these people had never met, nor ever knew of each other. And I realized that the common tie between these people was not the gas station, but me.

Without me, all of these disparate entities in the world would have nothing connecting them. Or, well, not significant connections. And it seemed like I was a static entity, and the other entities were moving and changing entities that came and went. I was like an old tree, and many birds who will never know or see each other came to rest on my branches through the years.

Carolina lily

The native Carolina lily (Lilium michauxii) was blooming in the woods in late July. Last year was the first year I knew it was there, being that there are only a few plants on a single secluded bank, and the blooms last only a few days in the heat of summer. The foliage itself is inconspicuous. This spring, it took me a long time of walking in circles carefully scrutinizing the ground before I even recognized the newly-emerged leaves. But this year I was prepared and visited the spot every few days throughout July to make sure I didn't miss the show.

I shot all of these on the same morning using my Hasselblad and Portra 400 film.

Dividing Bulbs

Yesterday I spent some time after work dividing and repotting more bulbs. I started with our red spider lily:

Lycoris radiata var. radiata unpotted 

Lycoris radiata var. radiata with old potting mix removed

Lycoris radiata var. radiata bulbs gently divided.

These should bloom next month. Hopefully repotting them will not upset that. Though I've read late summer is the best time to do it.

My first generation daffodils, divided. These little guys are almost ten years old now. They've survived abandonment while I was in Indiana, and moved with me to Birmingham, and even spent a winter of neglect at my great-grandmother's house in the country. They keep growing and dividing.

Here are the same seedlings back in 2011

Today I got in my first shipment of new daffodil bulbs. I may pot the autumn-blooming ones after work.

Late Summer

It's now late summer here. I have to admit I've gone on a garden frenzy lately, buying mostly tropicals, which are plants I was scarcely interested in before. I have an Epiphyllum (jungle) cactus, three Tillandsias and a Vriesia (bromeliads), two angel-wing begonias, an African violet, a bird's nest fern...what else?

I'm big into bulbs, too. I repotted my rain lilies, and bought a new species Habranthus brachyandrus, which look like small light pink amaryllises with dark purple centers. I have a native spider-lily (Hymenocallis occidentalis), sweet-almond Verbena, a native blue sage (Salvia azurea), and that's about it I think.

My night-blooming gladioli haven't bloomed yet. I've heard they bloom late, but by now I'm starting to wonder if they ever will. I took my xAmarcrinum bulbs out of their pot and put them in the ground. I took my 'Sir Winston Churchill' daffodils out of the ground and may put them in pots.

I was thinking of planting large drifts of daffodils in my back yard. I'll probably go with the cultivars 'Sweetness', 'Kedron', 'Silver Chimes', 'Thalia', and 'Trevithian'. They're my most reliable daffodils.

Although now I'm growing in heavy red clay instead of pure sand. I wonder how that will change things. Last month I amended a test patch of red clay. I applied a copious amount of dolomitic lime and incorporated it down to a foot deep. Then I added straw and alfalfa meal as organic matter down to six inches. Lime and heaps of organic matter are two cure-alls for most Southern soils, whether poor sand or heavy clay. It has been interesting to watch the transformation of the red clay since this treatment. Now the color is more grey/brown, and the texture is very loose and crumbly. Although, when wet, it is still very sticky. I'll want to add triple or quadruple the amount of organic matter. I hope to plant this test area in the fall, maybe with violas and Icelandic poppies.

Here are some recent plant photos:

Wild sweet potato - growing in the woods at my dad's

Sneezeweed - growing at my dad's

Lavandula x intermedia 'Grosso' - this is one of the cultivars of lavender grown commercially in France. I had a nice harvest of it this year. The secret of keeping lavender alive in the South: grow cultivars of L. x intermedia instead of English lavender (L. angustifolia), grow it in a large terracotta pot with sharply-draining potting mix, don't wet the leaves when watering, and keep it in a place where it gets a lot of sun but no rainfall. It can get rainfall in winter, though.

Salvia buchananii

Pycnanthemum muticum, a native mountain-mint. I like the way it smells better than true mint, and it attracts so many pollinators it's unbelievable. 

Lilium 'Black Beauty', old stand-by

Sabatia angularis - a lovely summer wildflower that grows in the woods near my dad's house.

Button-bush, Cephalanthus occidentalis. I'm deeply in love with this native shrub that likes to grow near water. I don't know why people don't grow it more often. Maybe because the flowers last only a couple of weeks.

A native terrestrial orchid growing at the arboretum along with the pitcher plants.

Daffodil Journal 2018-19

I don't know why it never occurred to me that I could order daffodils from Europe. I've been looking for ways to expand my daffodil collection into more of the wild species, especially since these are more fertile and have more diverse bloom times. I want to use them in my daffodil breeding. I recently purchased three species from a nursery in the U.K., and the shipping was only 7 (pounds not dollars). I got two autumn-blooming daffodils: Narcissus broussonettii and N. obsoletus, both natives of Morocco. I also got a form of the species N. tazetta. There is another nursery in California that sells autumn-blooming daffodils. The only thing is that you have to read through a bunch of text and write out an email of what you want, and then send a check in the mail (no web store, I mean). Very old-fashioned. From him I bought twelve bulbs of a strain called 'Autumn Colors', another called 'Autumn Pearl', both of which look like paperwhites but more yellow and blooming in the fall. I also got 'Matador', which is one of the best tazettas used in breeding. As a bonus, I got some oxblood lily and antique freesia bulbs. I've never grown either.

Yesterday I unpotted some of my dormant daffodils. Most of them have increased in size, tightly squeezed against each other in the pot. One, though, 'Orange Comet', had decreased in size and had a white fungus growing on it. I think they're still alive, but I put them in a smaller pot with fresh soil. 'Orange Comet' is a cyclamineus daffodil and I've never had much luck with them. I think it's too wet and humid here. One thing I noticed, though, was that the potting soil in all the pots was quite damp. To prevent any further fungus problems, I'm going to move the pots where they don't get rain and hold off watering them until the fall.

Also, I unpotted my third generation of daffodil seedlings. I now have hundreds of little pea-sized daffodil bulbs. Most of them seem to be jonquilla-like, but three bulbs among the rest looked different. Perhaps they are large-cup daffodils. I can't wait to see them flower in a few years. As of now, the only daffodils I've raised from seed have been the dainty yellow jonquillas.