Another Love of My Life

Here is the first lily of the season! This beauty is Columbia-Platte's "White Lace", grown from a bulb I bought from The Lily Garden.

All of my lilies are shorter in height this year than last year. When I was taking horticulture courses at Michigan State University [mumble mumble] years ago, one of my professors was studying the relationship between the growing conditions of Easter lilies, and things like how many flower buds formed, how long the leaves were, and how tall the stem grew. He was helping develop a computer model into which you could enter factors like how hot your greenhouse got each day, and at the end it would draw you a cute little picture of what the plant would look like. Back in the mid-1980's, this was pretty hot stuff!


When I was a kid, the "hot stuff" for me was the Burpee seed catalog. I think I about memorized the thing, but there were a few sections that I dog-eared every year. One was lily bulbs. Another was the section with the pansy seeds, and the one with fancy morning glories. *sigh*

I love flowers. Snapdragons: they must be the ones that "snap", and I particularly like how the dark red ones smell. I am often surprised how many people have never seen a snapdragon snap, or talk, when I demonstrate how to make them snap. Poppies: Thompson & Morgan's "Fairy Wings" (or whatever they are calling them this year).