SPH: Columbuine And Crocus

Purple columbine..... (Click pictures to enlarge)

"Often a purple patch or two is tacked on to a serious work of high promise, to give an effect of colour." ~ Horace (Ancient Roman Poet, 65 BC- 8 BC)

My crocus were disappointing this year and this was the only really good blossom. This comes from my late planting I'm sure and perhaps they will surprise me next spring. The columbine were a different story. Last spring a friend gave me three columbine plants from her shade garden when she had to remove the large tree that provided that shade. I put them in my new shade garden space and here they stumbled along through the hot summer and braved the heat and my attempts at amending the soil and adding the mulch. Their leaves stayed almost intact all winter, even through the unusual snowfall that is a rarity here on the coast of Virginia. As with all the items in the shade garden, I added small stakes to mark their position before putting down the heavy mulching in January (typically our coldest month). In late February, the columbine started growing..... and growing and growing.. until they were lovely mounds of scalloped leaves about 14 to 16" in diameter. In March the middle upright stems began to form and each plant had thirty to forty flower heads form. They started blooming in April and bloomed on through the month and the month of May and finally finished the second week in June. I have clipped off the remaining seed pods and recovered hundreds of the little black seeds. So far, my research gives many different ideas about starting these from seed.... I hope at least one of them is correct because I would love to put these out behind our fence in the preserve to grow wild... along with the wild yellow and red forms already there.

Purple crocus......

I have been absent from the Saturday Photo Hunt for some time... so many flower beds to create and so little time and energy...(the knees and body does not recover from hard labor like it used to). Glad to be back for this loveliest of themes... "purple".

(end of post)
PhotoHunt