lilalee

Sounds lovely!! A wonderful time for all!! But, never heard of white forsythia! I have yellow, but all my flowering trees, and bushes are white. When we bought this house I wanted a white theme for the outdoors. Have to google the white forsythia!! Nice surprise!!

lilalee

By the way Baldur, some of those new peices are not even human!!! The new media we were given today!!

Baldur

I had never seen the white forsythia before eitherm and it's blooming time has since passed so I'll need to wait until next Spring.
The leaves are a bit wider than the standard yellow forsythia.
I would not have taken it for the same species at all. Raymond however doesn't joke about such things. We shall see.

His property has always been a farm though in his time there it is more flowers and less veggies. Though his vegetable garden still dwarfs mine.
I however am a bit ahead of him climate wise so my garden is further along.

He rents out one one of his pastures and an outbuilding and there are now cows, goats and one horse out there.
He himself has every sort of fowl: chickens, ducks, guinea hens, pidgeons and a few peacock promenading around.

Baldur

-m

Yesterday at dinner there was the typical cookout fare.
Someone howver made a large Dutch oven full of Scalloped Potatoes.
Heavens, was that wonderful. They were not hot but still somewhat warm, and did not last very long at all.

lilalee

Love scalloped potatoes!!

Baldur

My garden is very light on white flowers, I'm more drawn to saturated deeper colors.
However as would be expected there are those quirks that Baldur alone has.
I tend to avoid very modern looking hybrids and like the older forms of many flowers.
For some reason plant breeders try to make just about every flower now 'doubled', they breed in extra petals for a full 'pom-pom' effect.
What first set me off on this personal campaign was seeing an older variety of hollyhock.
My first encounter with them was the variety called 'Chartres double'. In this type each flower resembles a carnation with ruffle after ruffle of petals making a poufy mass of a blossom.
Then I happened to see an older variety in a garden.
This was a large pink opened bowl shaped blossom with a star of deep raspberry inside surround the rather pronounced yellow anther and pistils.
It was mesmerizing.
I couldn't get seeds as none of the seedheads were even close to ripe, but I figured I could always buy the seeds.

I was mistaken. Back then in the 1970s, without the Internet to check everywhere one could not buy such a thing.
You could buy just about any color of the 'doubles' though.
Unhappily I bought a couple packets of seed.

For those who haven't had the joys of trying to start a hollyhock bed there is a factor you should know. Hollyhocks in colder climates will not bloom the first year. You plant the seeds and get a healthy little rosette of foliage but no flowering stalks until the second year.
So I planted them and waited until the Second summer when I was rewarded with approximately 30 huge flowering stalks making a living wall of flowers along one side of my yard.

Baldur

+ing

But there was a surprise.
Two of the hollyhocks didn't come out 'correctly'.
One was a very nice clear apricot color and with no trace of the double petal effect. The other was a deep red with just a barely developed ruffle of secondary petals inside.
Hmmmmmmmmm, I could hear the rusty cogs in my mind creaking and scraping. I was going to try to reverse breed my hollyhocks.
Soooooooo
That summer I let the hollyhocks bloom freely and carefully cut off each seed pod from the double flowering hollyhocks and gave them away to anyone who wanted them.
Then I seeded more plants using the 'defective' plant's seeds.
Eventually what happened was the babies, 4 years later, were about 20% single flowered. At that point I started digging up and removing the double flowering plants. The neighbors all took them gratefully.
Oddly hollyhocks are supposedly biennial, with the plants dying at the end of year 2 Often however they go on and on as perennials.

As an aside note, I ended up moving in the dead of winter one year and left the hollyhocks behind as they couldn't be dug out.
When checking the spring catalogs for the new garden they offered a black single flowering variety which was a Godsend. They open very dark but with exposure to sun they become more of a dark burgundy rather than true black.

Now even standard catalogs are selling the single flowering type again, it seems their popularity has returned.

Baldur

Since this has started I've gained an apreciation for vintage varieties of other flowers as well.
As I got more into it I learned that fragrance was often bred out in exchange for bigger flashier blossom.
Find an old English rose and the difference is obvious.

Baldur

What we call 'cabbage roses' are formed with looser heads of petals, that tend to look a bit 'dropsy' compared to modern tea roses. The tea roses cannot compare in sweetness of scent.

Currently my peonies are in full bloom, I can smell then right now at midnight in my office even though the nearest plant is 30 feet away.

lilalee

I have had a peony for four years, and it has never bloomed! Every year it gets a little bigger,but not even a bud!

Dragon

I absolutely love hollyhocks (I love gladiolas as well somehow, when I mean hollyhocks I always say gladiola and vice versa) I don't know if I've seen the doubles or singles, they always seem quite full so probably doubles but it seems to me my grandma's hollyhocks were more like open trumpets so perhaps she had singles.
Peonies are so beautiful and I always want to bring them into the house but resist the urge as they're always crawling with ants (I realize they need the ants so I not complaining, just wishing I could have a big bouquet of them on my kitchen table and sad that I can't)
Of course as I live in an apartment style condo the point is moot as I can't have a garden at all.

Baldur

They can be fussy, but if they like theit location the rewards come very quickly.
The things they require are full sun, rich and relatively droughtfree conditions to be very happy.
also plant the crown a couple inches below the soil line, which runs counter to how most perennials are dealt with

Baldur

'All Baldur, All the Time'

Now here's a strange topic: When was the last time anyone noticed matthew being here?
His last drawing was on May 30th and I haven't seen any comments left by him in at least a few days. Anyone else notice the deafening silence?

Baldur

It rained all day yesterday and has been grey and gloomy today. Everything is soaking wet so gardening is out of the question.

Monday afternoon I managed to get the pumpkins and winter squash planted. Unfortunately early June is as early as Rhode Islanders dare plant anything cold sensitive. The weather here varies greatly from one day to the next.
I spread composted horse manure over the whole area and put in 15 hills of squash/pumpkins. If we're lucky there will be enough larger squash suitable for over-winter storage.

Baldur

Seiki got into the garden and fairly demolished the area where the basil was planted. I will need to go out and find more basil seed.
Cats and gardens don't always work well together.

Dragon

I have noticed a definite lack of matthew lately. Perhaps business at the pool hall picked up and he's simply not had time to stop in. I'll hope that's the problem and that nothing bad has happened.

matthew

Perhaps he was too busy being other people??? Or was thong shopping???

:) I hope y'all enjoyed the peace & quiet... lol

matthew

It was a work thing... Been a couple weeks since I had any free time...

anotherronism

Or laying low - seeing what will happen?

Dragon

I had a sneaking suspicion it might be thong shopping. Just wasn't sure if it was Victoria's Secret or more Frankies of Hollywood.