It's A Blooming Mystery

Flowers bloom on their own time, a fact that seldom bothers me in my daily life as an Austin slacker. But now that I’ve become a Garden Blogger [note those capital letters!], I occasionally need blooms on my plants for a certain date – like last week's Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day on May 15th. Nothing makes me drag my feet more than a direct order to hustle, and my garden behaves no less stubbornly. That must be why the Rose of Sharon refused to open one single bud for the 15th, but opened a dozen flowers on the 17th, instead. Should I call it the "Roses of Sharon" since this is more than one shrub in a clump?

There were buds on the Hemerocallis ‘Prairie Blue Eyes’ by the 15th, but none opened until today. It’s not a fancy daylily by today’s standards, but I’ve loved it for a decade, bringing it to Texas from Illinois.

We Garden Bloggers have another scheduled event coming up - the Garden Bloggers book club is due by the end of May. Writing about the book, Passalong Plants, is easy – heck, I’ve even met one of the authors - Felder Rushing - but it’s not so easy to get flowers to open on time. I absolutely need photos of some passalong plants from my own garden to use as illustrations for this post, but will they get their act together and bloom within the next 11 days?

There’s no schedule involved for this next group of plants – just a hope that one of these days they’ll flower for me –

The Pineapple Guava above should bloom in spring – my friend Diane’s shrub was covered in its oddly beautiful flowers just a couple of weeks ago – but this young plant had a rough winter and was frozen back before it had a chance to make any blossoms. The botanical name is Feijoa sellowiana, so it is not actually a guava. Although it would be interesting to taste the fruit, described as Pineapple mixed with strawberry, I’m more interested in seeing the flowers.

Since this pomegranate has leafed out and I like the way the leaves and branches look, is it greedy to want delectable orange flowers, too? I’ll give this young tree one more year in this spot, but if it doesn’t bloom next spring – it will be transplant time the following fall.

Next we have a pair of non-blooming plants. The amarcrinum at right may take a few years to settle in and I’m not worried about it at all… but that perfect weed of a Brugmansia? Angel Trumpets are supposed to love water, sun and organic fertilizer, growing so quickly that even when cut to the ground over winter, they bulk up and hang long, fragrant bells. This one has been treated like a queen for a couple of seasons, given everything it wants, and if it was labeled correctly, someday the bells will be yellow.

I’ll ignore these poky plants, and pay attention to the ones in flower now – a couple of daylilies, annual moss roses, and the last of the larkspur; yellow Achillea, white and gold lantanas and the "Roses" of Sharon; short annual violet Verbenas and tall Verbena bonariensis, a sea of Salvias, budding Cannas and a Butterfly bush in bloom. The view from the back door is just fine today.


NURSERY NEWS
Many of us were dismayed to find that Kimas Tejas Nursery, southeast of Austin in the Bastrop area, had closed its doors last fall. But it wasn’t permanent – I had this news via email from the nursery:
Kimas Tejas has reopened on a seasonal basis. For the months of March, April, May and June, Kimas Tejas will be open Wednesday through Saturday, closed Sunday, Monday and Tuesday.
The nursery will be closed for the months of July and August, then will reopen for the fall planting season in September, October and November. Then close for December, January and February.

THE NAMESAKE
One of these days I’m going to buy the DVD of Monsoon Wedding. Did anyone of you also see it? Have you had a special fondness for orange marigolds ever since? The director Mira Nair has a new movie in the theaters, which Philo and I enjoyed this week.
You might like it, too – The Namesake has some wonderful actors with memorable faces, is full of humor, intelligence and sadness, touching on the immigrant experience and Indian customs, separations and reunions, focusing on a coming-of-age story and several becoming-in-love stories. Mira Nair looks at things we’ve seen elsewhere, but from a different perspective. How many times have you seen the Taj Mahal in movies? A dozen times? Usually it looks like a postcard, but this time, it’s seen as the total of many designs and many parts, making us somehow recognize that individual people made those parts.