six on Saturday, 20 April 2024

Today’s six are a quick rundown of some colorful blooms that are finally appearing in the garden. For participation guidelines for joining this Saturday sharing of six things going on in our gardens and for links to many more posts, see Jim Stephens’ Garden Ruminations, the gathering point of our posts.

1. I’ll start with a selection of bearded rises. The first below is much lighter lavender than the photo indicates. Its color in the featured image is more accurate. There are irises, white, yellow, and blue, yet to bloom, but these will get us started.

2. Second is Alabama’s native columbine, Aquilegia canadensis, also called red columbine, Canadian columbine, and Eastern columbine. I bought this at the Blount County Master Gardeners Association plant sale last year and am delighted with how well it is doing.

3. From red to blue for the next entry. I’ve had a couple of clusters of narrow leaf blue-eyed grass appear on their own in the wooded area of the garden and became fascinated with it. So, I ordered Sisyrinchium angustifolium ‘Lucerne’ online from Perennial Farm Marketplace. The plants arrived in excellent condition and are blooming within two weeks of planting.

4. Okay, back to red for the red buckeye (Aesculus pavia), a favorite native plant for Alabama. This one I am proud to say I grew from seed–starting 20 years ago, but it has propagated itself with several dropped seeds over recent years. You can see at least four of these plants under the flowering mother shrub in the first photo below. Just about as wide as tall, this red buckeye has put forth perfuse flowering again this year.

5. There are two widely distanced late season clumps of daffodils blooming—so widely distanced that they are on opposite sides of the garden. Although naturalized, these are not native, rather they are from central and southern Europe. Neither do I call them daffodils. These are one of the few such plants that I refer to as narcissus. In fact, iNaturalists’ Seek app identifies them as Poets’ Narcissus or Narcissus poeticus. I’m not entirely convinced of that identification due to the coloration of the edge of the corona, but being a retired professor of English and having published nature poetry, I’m happy to agree to anything associated with plants and poets.

6. This week’s final selection is my white fringe tree, or Grancy Gray-beard (Chionanthus virginicus). The past two winters have not been kind to it. In fact, I almost pruned quite a bit of it away, but at the last minute decide that there was enough flex in the outer stems to give it all a chance, and I’m glad that I did.

The native azaleas are just beginning to bloom, but they will have to wait for the next six. Maybe they’ll be joined with some new plants as well. Today is this year’s Blount County Master Gardener plant sale, so I’ll be looking for something to buy—then I’ll have to be looking for a place to plant it.