Re: CULT: Bloom Report
Dennis -
Bloom season over in Cincinnati? Don't tell me you raise pure arils and don't
raise Japanese? They are the queens of the garden, my man, and they are just
kicking in now. Pinkerton, in its second year has been blooming two weeks and
still has a mess of buds left, but the gawdawmighty bloom so far has been Asian
Warrior, a massive velvety purple with a golden eye radiating white like the
beards on wheat on three petals and just white rays on the other three.
Pixie Won is a much smaller flower, about half the size of the mighty warrior,
and it pops up from a mass of pale green varigated foliage. Three petal purple
flowers have veined golden windows with deeper purple arches and style arms are
white with a yellow rib. After a day in floom it begins to fade to
significantly lighter lavender as new purple flowers come in beside it.
My 10x25 Japanese bed has an antiqued green temple lantern in the center of
each side with the flowers planted around it and is open in the middle in hopes
of one day building a curved bridge for viewing the JIs from above. Of course
my ultimate fantasy would be to enclose two sides of the property with an
undulating dragon wall, say 7-10 feet at the lower end to the entrance where
the dragon's head would rear up, and 4-6 feet at the upper end where the tail
would be, so the perspective would make it look even bigger. I saw such a brick
wall in China, using tile atop it for scales, and with fretwork ceramic inserts
showing things like pheasants, or pandas nibbling bamboo shoots. My garden
would be a far better location, but I cannot manage to find the spare million
or so it would take to build it and still keep up my travels.
On the Asian theme, Asian lilies have been a great delight coming in now after
the TB iris (although I still have three more buds to go on that notorious late
bloomer Colette Thurillet). Problem is with their tall stalks I've lacked a
means of integrating them into a garden, but I think I now have the answer. I'm
going to plug them in among day lily clumps, so they will fill the void between
TB bloom and daylily bloom, and before the rebloomers begin. Coming out of the
clumps of daylily foliage they should look like minarets in some desert city
suddenly made green with vivid megaphones atop them heralding Asian aphorisms
like, "Love is easy to say, difficult to understand."
Well, back to new bed prep and building golden pleasure domes in my mind. With
tedious work you don't even need opium for such dreams, although the metaphors
still get mixed.
You gotta get some Japanese, Dennis.
James Brooks
comeback@usit.net
Jonesborough, TN
Dennis Kramb wrote:
> Well, bloom season is finally winding down. Praline Festival (LA) has a
> few more buds. My Ensiberian has one flower left. And my Virginica has
> one flower left. After that bloom season will be over, until the
> rebloomers kick in, anyway.
>
> It was a good season. Many new things bloomed for me, including
> Louisianas, Arils (yes, the pure arils, not just arilbreds),
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Old school buds here:
http://click.egroups.com/1/4057/0/_/486170/_/960467254/
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