The Variegated Thumb

Over the last year I have read several plant-related books that have referenced a classic historical fiction novel by Alexandre Dumas, The Black Tulip.  Alexandre Dumas is the author who wrote The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo.  After reading about the importance of this book and its portrayal of a very real tulip obsession in Holland, I found myself an old copy of the book and read it last Fall.

The book focuses on a tulip fancier who is committed to being the first person to breed a truly black tulip, a challenge issued by the royal plant society.  The story intertwines historical figures and events, to really put the reader into the time frame of these events.

I have to say that this book was one of the most enjoyable books I’ve read in quite a while.  It has a nice love story, with the main character being equally entranced in his love interests: a female and a trio of tulip bulbs.

I would recommend this book to anyone, really.  You don’t have to be a plant nut to enjoy the book, and it might even shed a little light on what may otherwise seem to be a crazy obsession.

Do you know of any other great works of fiction that involve plants in pivotal roles?

We have had a rather stunning Tulip display in the front yard for about 6 years now.  I started by planting red and white tulips staggered in concentric circles in the figure 8 garden.  Those individual bulbs have multiplied quite a bit over the years.

This Fall we decided to add to the display, without removing any of the current bulbs.  Red and yellow Tulips are easy to come by and are a common color scheme.  I was adamant that we didn’t do something common.  We looked into different colors that we could add to our red and white to make a nice theme.  We decided to add a couple of pinks and purples to the mix.  It will be a sort of Valentine’s mix of colors.

New tulip colors being added for next spring.

We are adding about 60 bulbs this year - 15 Apricot Impressions, 15 Purple Flag, 15 Pink Impressions and 12-15 Lilac bulbs that my in-laws bought in the Netherlands.

I’m excited to see how these bulbs complement our Spring display next year.  We were also careful to pick Tulip styles that match our existing contingent of Darwin hybrids.  The added bulbs didn’t have to be Darwins, but we didn’t want to add a bunch of different heights and frilly shapes to our existing display.

Bulbs laid out carefully between the circles of existing bulbs and ready to plant.

Future modifications will probably mean that we’ll have to dig up bulbs and replace them with different colors.  The other option would be to have an “anything goes” bed of Tulips, but for now we’re going for more of a planned look and I think it has been working really well.  We’ve even had a couple of neighbors ask if they could use our Tulip bed for photo shoots with their kids.  We were happy to oblige!  That’s what it’s all about - having others enjoy our Tulip bed.

I was able to attend a meteorology conference in Halifax, Nova Scotia during the first week of June.  I had never been to Nova Scotia before and I needed to stay in the city for the week, but I was still able to get in a little sight-seeing.  Along with some historical sights, I visited the Public Gardens, which is a Victorian Garden originally established in 1867.

Halifax Public Gardens map

The gardens are well maintained and well used by locals.  I was surprised by the number of plants and trees in bloom while I was there.  As you can see in the map above, there is a large pond (including ducks) and a couple of smaller water features.  There is also a nice bandstand, which is a common music venue during the Summer.

Maple tree (Acer sp.) in the Halifax Public Gardens

Apparently the gardens were badly damaged in September 2003 by Hurricane Juan.  Many large trees were destroyed.  When I was there, the signs had all been covered over with new growth.

Rhododendron in the Halifax Public Gardens

Some of my favorite plants were the orange Maple trees (pictured above), the rhododendrons (above) and the tulip beds (below).  I also saw a planting of neat Euphorbias, which might have been ‘Tiny Tim.’

Wandering Tulip bed at the Halifax Public Gardens

See my photo album here.

About 5 years ago I created a “figure 8″ shaped garden in the front yard around a young maple tree that had just been planted.  Inside the flowerbed I planted 2 packages of tulips - 16 red and 16 white.  In April the tulips open, the red tulips first and the white ones about a week later.

Pee-Wee in front of the tulip bed - Spring 2006

This is an event we look forward to each year.  It is probably the most anticipated moment in our garden.

Pee-Wee in the tulip bed - Spring 2006

When I first planted the tulips I set them out geometrically.  I alternated between red and white, making 2 concentric circles in each half of the corner garden.  The outer circle of the larger half of the “figure 8″ was planted with 7 whites and 7 reds.  The inner circle was planted with 3 of each.  In the smaller half of the “figure 8″ I planted 4 of each in the outer circle and 2 of each in the inner circle.  Is my math correct?  That should be 16 of each color for the first year.

Our tulip bed in bloom - Spring 2009

We used red and white tulips because we live in Norman, Oklahoma, home of the the University of Oklahoma Sooners.  [See the OU flag in the picture above?]

Partial bird's eye view of the tulip bed - Spring 2009

From the street, you don’t really see a geometrical design, you just see a sea of red and white tulips.   But from above, you can see the pattern pretty well.  Each year they multiply and multiply.

And yet more tulip pictures - Spring 2009

This year, I counted as many as 21 blooms in one location!  In a perfect world, each tulip bulb would double each year.  This would mean that in year two a single tulip bulb would have multiplied to 2, in year three to 4, in year four to 8, in year five to 16, and in year six to 32.  If I’m doing the math correctly, either my tulip bulbs have produced more than one offset each year (which is possible) or I planted them more than 5 years ago.  But I think my memory is correct on how long ago they were planted.

The prolific white tulip. See if you can count all 21 buds. They're all there!

Of course, the 21 blooms was the most I counted at any one location.  Other locations had as few as 6 or 8.  Last year we dug up some of the offsets at locations where there were many more than other locations and relocated some of the bulbs to fill in the bed a little bit.  We will probably want to do the same thing again this year, once the plants have tied back to the ground surface.

Light snow fell on the red tulip buds a couple of weeks ago, while the white tulip buds were still developing.

I was worried this year that the tulips would not all bloom because of the snow we got a couple of weeks ago after the buds were already exposed, but they weren’t affected much by the quick cold snap.

Open red tulip bud

But, as you can see, they turned out okay.  The first two pictures from this post are from 2 seasons ago simply because I didn’t get a good picture of the tulip bed when both white and red tulips looked their best this year.

Single white tulip seeking long, cool blooming season (also, long walks on the beach, of course).

Over the last couple of months I have been working on a project at work that had me computing the angle of the sun above the horizon across the US at all times of the day. Apparently the companies that take the high resolution overhead photographs for Google Earth and other mapping utilities require that the sun be at least 30 degrees above the horizon. When I started the project, about half of the US had a solar angle lower than 30 degrees all day long. Now the entire US reaches a solar angle greater than 30 degrees each day.

Kingdom Plantae has noticed! Here are some pictures of the bloomage occurring in my house and yard.

Several flowers I didn’t get to until they had already wilted - including our crocuses.  I forgot to get a picture of our Flowering Quince bush when it was all blooms and no leaves, but here’s what it looks like today:

Our Tulip tree (saucer magnolia) is starting to get big.  Since it has a lot of branching at ground level, I have been trying to thin it out a little each year so that it will be somewhat tree-like.  I think it is coming along pretty well.  I will probably have to remove a couple more branches this year.  Here’s the gorgeous blooms:

We have 3 different color combinations of Daffodils in our back flower garden (all yellow, light yellow with dark yellow center, and white with orange tinted center).  Here’s two of them:

We planted a flowering cherry tree 2 years ago and within a couple of months we noticed something horribly wrong with it.  Even though it was really just a 6 foot tall twig, it appeared to have been struck by lightning or diseased or something.  Half of it had turned black and ceased growing.  There is a clear line running straight down it’s skinny trunk.  All new growth has come from the other half.  We’ve been debating whether to dig it up and move it to a less prominent location, since we had strategically positioned it to overhang our corner garden.  But this year it surprised us.  It has its first ever cheery blossom coming out and they look to be ready to open very soon!  Can you see them in the foreground?:

I received this flowering peach tree last year as a gift and it was covered in 2 colors of blooms when we planted it.  I’m glad to see it burst forth color again this year.  It has both magenta and light pink blooms intermixed on all the branches:

I overwintered 4 cyclamen indoors that had been very healthy all year outdoors.  They lost most of their leaves and went dormant during the winter, so I don’t know how they will do with the transition.  Here is a new cyclamen that I just planted.  It also has 2 colors blooms:

These are the amaryllis that I wrote about in my previous post.  I have had them for several years now and they rebloomed for me this year.

I also wrote in my last post about getting my Christmas cactus to rebloom.  Well, I have a friend that just moved to Ireland for a couple of years and left her plants behind with me while she’s gone.  Her Christmas (Easter?) cactus didn’t bloom at the same time as mine did, but just surprised me with some blooms in the last couple of weeks:

This one’s not really a bloom, but I was very happy to see this new little guy’s foliage coming out this year.  I just planted this Japanese Maple tree last year and I wasn’t sure that he was going to make it.

The tulips we planted in the backyard have bloomed a couple of weeks sooner each year than those in the front yard.  I will have to post again when our tulip-filled front flower bed is in bloom.  Here is the first of our backyard tulips:

We bought another azalea this year.  The price was irresistible ($2.48)!  Hopefully the ones we planted last year will bloom again for us.  They might need some fertilizer encouragement.  Here’s our new one:

I was suprised to see these tiny blooms on my little leopard lily (an indoor plant).  The blooms actually have little purple stamens coming out of the white flowers.  I couldn’t pick up the detail with my camera though.

I will post more blooms as they arrive.  I expect to have a BUNCH of tulips, some daylilies, irises and who knows what else!