Surprise!

Bob received an early birthday gift from me. For the past three years, I've been meaning to get a Star Magnolia for Bob as he'd expressed his admiration for these trees every spring. But come his actual birthday, the trees were past bloom so when I'd confront them at garden centers, they'd be played out grey sticks- none too impressive as a present! This year, we encountered a magnolia in full bloom near a store and I ran out the next day to a nursery and bought the little tree above. We know exactly where it's going to go.

And that leads to the thanks that are overdue to our friend Tina who last year divided some of her daffodils and delivered a 5 gallon container full of bulbs to yours truly. Tina has been collecting and planting daffodils for years and has an amazing display on their back hillside- every color and petal arrangement and sepal to corona ratio is represented. It's really exceptional at this time of year. So I dutifully planted all the bulbs given... not easy as our soil is like rock and gravel until dug up and amended. But they're coming up! I'm certain that with passing years, they'll thicken up (I planted them in clusters of 5 or 6) and will only get better. But it's a start on springtime magnificence!

And that reminds me that I totally forgot (a lot on my mind and very short of time!) to mention one possible reason my delphinium seedlings did so well... could have been the generous doses of raw manure! I purchased a few delphinium for Balleck's Nursery in East Haddam last year. They do have pretty fabulous Delphinium; bigger and more bumptious than most nurseries. Anita Balleck, the probably 90 year old proprietor started talking Delphinium with me. She told me a story about seeing tremendous delphinium at some famous garden in England. Like acres of seven foot tall blue monsters. The next time she was there, the Delphinium were past, and there were two men with a tractor and a trailer full of raw pig shit. They were shoveling and pouring this hot, stinking mess right around all those Delphinium, which were wallowing in it and eating it all up. So she maintained that's where good Delphinium start: a whole lot of shit. Bob ladled the horse manure on last fall ( I guess we have Crisco the Stallion to thank for that!) and looks like a big success this spring. (Bottles courtesy of our white wine drinking friends, with whom we trade manure for rocks).