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Beautiful Fringed Tulip

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Fringed Orange Tulip

You’re probably starting to think that most of my tulips are orange, aren’t you?

Honest, I have tulips in many different colours. It’s just that the orange ones seem to interest me the most this year. I love the fringed tulips. As you can see in this closeup they are very ornate and have a lot of flare, or Zing. Whatever you want to call it, they give the garden a little something extra and I just love them.

Late yesterday afternoon I decided to do some work in my front garden. That’s where I found this beauty.

The front garden has been pruned and tidied up now. Hopefully I’ll feel up to finishing the back garden sometime later today. I really need to get the flower beds in the back yard finished.

BTW this photo, and the one I’m using on Tricia’s Musings is straight off the camera. No cropping, no adjusting color – just as is. Some people have been asking what kind of camera I’m using, it’s a Sony Cybershot DSC-H5 7.2MP.

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The sun is shining!

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Finally!

The week started off well, with perhaps our hottest day so far this year, but then it quickly went downhill beginning on Tuesday.

It’s been cold, rainy and kind of dreary most of this week. I’m not complaining because the plants in my garden sure did need that rain and as I’ve said in earlier posts this week the garden has been growing and blooming like crazy.

It’s just that the cold and drizzle haven’t done a thing for my spirits!

Finally, today it’s sunny out. It’s still on the cool side though. It was supposed to reach 18 Celsius which is about 64 F, but as far as I can tell the highest it’s gotten has been to 15 C. Oh well, that’s still warmer than much of the rest of the week.

The weekend looks like it’s going to be really nice. I’m hoping to get outside and finish up the “spring cleaning” of my garden. I still have bulbs to plant too! Remember last fall I bought a bunch of bulbs but didn’t feel well enough to plant them? Well, most of them survived the winter in our cool basement but I’ve got to get them in the ground!

Since I haven’t planted any seeds yet I’ll probably do a bit of that this weekend too. We might even go to a nursery and buy some veggies that have already been started – tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers just to catch up!

We’ll also buy some new cedar mulch to put on the garden beds to hold in moisture.

Tips on how to learn more about the plants growing in your garden

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I often receive questions that ask me to explain in detail how to care for specific perennials. While I am working on having a very large index of care information for specific plants it does take time to create this information.

Now, even though I grew up in a family that gardened, I still found myself somewhat bewildered when I moved into my current home and started a garden of my own. I was growing a number of new plants – perennial and annual that I’d never worked with in the past. I too, had tons of questions.

What did I do in order to brush up on my knowledge?

Well, I went searching on the internet to find information on specific plants and gardening techniques. This was a wonderful method of getting information and my list of gardening related bookmark is huge! Unfortunately I also came across information that contradicted other information that I’d found.

That’s when I began buying gardening books. I bought a few good general gardening books, one or two about perennials and annuals, and a few that discussed gardening in my particular area, or at least in my Country. That was one of the best moves that I could have made. Now I’ve got 10+ very helpful gardening books at hand whenever I need to look something up.

Practice, experimentation, talking to other gardeners, and joining garden forums such as the Garden Web also helped quite a bit.

I observed my plants carefully in the first year on my own, taking notes occasionally as to the various plants bloom time, how often it bloomed, when it first started to grow in the spring and so on. I learned a lot just by observing my plants and caring for them as best I could.

Of course nothing pleased me more than when my mother, visiting from our home town and staying with us for a week or so, remarked as she gazed at our garden, “It’s so nice to know that one of our children inherited my green thumb”. What higher compliment could one gardener give another?

If you are just starting your garden, or still in the process of learning about new plants you might want to pick up one or all of the following books:

Perennials for Dummies by Marcia Tatroe ISBN 0764550306;

Rodale’s Illustrated Encyclopedia of Perennials: 10th Anniversary Revised and Expanded Edition by Ellen Phillips and C. Colston Burrell ISBN: 0875965709;

The Well-Tended Perennial Garden: Planting and Pruning Techniques by Tracy Disabato-Aust, Steven M. Still ISBN: 0881924148.

Enjoy your garden!

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