Wednesday, May 21, 2008

This is Firepower!

As those who know me will attest, I'm a huge fan of fire coloured flowers, especially those in the yellow to orange range. Now I'll admit first off, that these gorgeous tulips are not from our garden (we should have been so lucky this year!), but are from our neighbor's yard across the street. (He's the cool guy who, in late 2002, left a huge pile of boulders in our yard ... the ones that eventually became the front boulder bed.)

A couple of years ago he bought an enormous number of tulips of all sorts at a late season sale and had his helpers plant them, quite literally all around his place. I don't quite understand how they managed to escape the carnage ours suffered, but they sure were a welcome sight on the block recently, given our paltry number of blooms. What's odd is that he had a bunch of daffodils planted too, but they have largely disappeared this year (along with a lot of others' daffodils), but most of the tulips did quite well. Go figure ... we had a great year for Daffodils, but the Tulips largely disappeared, but when you cross the street, the opposite situation occurred. Ah, the vicissitudes of Iowa weather ....

Photos by Fernymoss, taken on 6 May, 2008.

9 comments:

Shady Gardener said...

Now, THAT is a mystery! I do not understand how daffodils disappear. :-) And to say he "hit" every daffodil while planting his tulips would be quite a feat. (Do you think he removed them??)

Thanks for being such a frequent visitor! I haven't been "out" much, lately. It's that time of year! ;-)

Shady Gardener said...

Oops! I keep meaning to ask, Who is "Fernymoss?" Not you?

troutbirder said...

Beautiful pictures and interesting commentary. I especially am interested in native plants suitable for woodland gardens. I do have two types of trilliums which are just perfect.

olivia said...

Wow IVG! Those colours are amazing ... and Fernymoss did a great job capturing them ... beautiful!

boran2 said...

It must be some kind of Iowa microenvironment. ;-)

Great photos!

Iowa Victory Gardener said...

Howdy Shady ... didn't mean to imply he had done anything to them... just that theirs, like many around here this spring lost a lot of tulips and daffodils that just didn't return. Ours did, thus the mystery ...

Btw, I always love to see what's going on over your way, esp your new terrace project. Fernymoss is my longtime partner in gardening crime, hehe.

Iowa Victory Gardener said...

Hi Troutbirder, thanks for stopping by ... you can see more of what we have planted if you just use the search key Woodland Garden, which will pull up all my old posts relative to the subject. Thanks for the compliment...

Iowa Victory Gardener said...

Welcome back Olivia! (wherever you were, lol) I loved the colours so much I had to post these even though they didn't come from our garden. But I should have Columbines up in a day or so ... I've been working on hellebore post, but haven't finished it yet. And it's past due for an Arum Update too, hehe. No signs of blooms just yet though...

Iowa Victory Gardener said...

hey B2! Glad you liked 'em, I did too! I think that's about the last of the tulips you'll see here this year, alas....