I Can See Clearly Now

The secondary cataracts are gone. I still have a natural vibration and the wind has been blowing a lot of late. There are still obstacles to photographic clarity. Such is the way it is. I see Puschkinia.

 

I can read road signs again. Not that I need to driving the same roads day after day. I just need to be able to find my way home.

With enough daylight left to go on an evening stroll to see spring rising steadily from the earth.

What does the garden want or need? Right now it is mostly picking up sticks. The wind has been blowing fierce more days than not.

When the wind doesn't blow and the light is just right, I can capture Trout Lily blooms with some clarity. They are spreading. It is a native plant success story.

Bulbarella has had her own kind of success with the minor bulbs. Snowdrops, scilla, chionodoxa, puschkinia, corydalis and muscari began to spread exponentially with a little division and some new garden management. There is a lot to see.

A Sign

To what effect we shall see. Seeds are being gathered for the roadside vegetable garden. I'll be going heavy on the dried beans, winter squash and storable root crops.

Poked Again

The tax man comes like a thief in the night. The cage was stomped on, kicked to the side and the Oconee Bell was mowed to the ground. Scroll down to the previous post for a before shot if you have the heart for it.

Oconee Bell must be quite tasty to make the extra effort and to eat the whole thing. Perhaps that has something to do with its rarity in the wild.

Fine. Two can play that game.

I am half sighted now which has been a big improvement. I can almost see all six garden chotchkes. Three more days to restored vision. What else have they eaten?

I have been impressed by the obliterated daffodil's will to bloom. Some remnant flowers are opening from bud a week later on frozen stems. More cold is on the way.

The daffodils were not a total loss. Not here. Not in the land of Bulbarella. The coming cold is normal cold in the mid 20s range. That can still freeze things when all the conditions align. We shall see.

It's good to have backup and the Oconee Bell has been started in other locations. I'm tempted to dig and divide the mowed one, the mother plant, when my vision is restored. In the meantime, I had a jug of left over stinky varmint repellant. Get Off My Lawn!

The survivors looking a little tattered bloom on.

There has been death among the conifers. All three of the recently added Koster's Chamaecyparis have failed to establish. The Barton's Cypress, another Chamaecyparis, are looking rough and two of them are mostly dead. I need my 'Pusch' dwarf spruce. The only real quality plant nursery in town has closed and I am lost and adrift without them.

It's a jungle out there.

Poked

I got poked in my bad eye by the stiff end of a burning bush at the Inn yesterday morning. I had my weeding glasses on. It stung and ran tears for the rest of the day. Just what I need, a scratched eyeball the week before the second easy office visit laser fix for the secondary cataracts.

I saw drifts of blue scilla and chionodoxa through the tears in my eyes and I realized, all I have to lose is one eyeball and I will be a carbon copy of my maternal grandfather.

The calculating and filling out of the first pencil set of state and federal tax forms was done in the passing storm this morning. It's a lot like counting bulbs, not a very precise operation and I have a college degree. The number of needed forms has been steadily increasing since a paper reduction attempt in 2017. It's best to use a pencil on the first trip into the Byzantine. Ink comes second when you can live with the numbers.

How many anemones do you see?

I keep the Oconee Bell covered in a cage. I am surrounded by herbivores. Many flowers are apparently edible, a tax I am not always willing to pay.

The rain stopped. The sun came out and the wind started to howl. It was a hot 65-degree wind pouring in from the gulf like a tsunami. Some frostbitten unobliterated daffodils are starting to come into bloom. 

Scary windy at times and spitting random sun showers from mostly blue skies. I wandered out for a bit during a calm spell. Out there I saw a rainbow.

Somewhere around the time my maternal grandfather was 98 or so, it was discovered he had not been filing or paying any taxes since he retired some 30 plus years earlier. A settlement was reached. He didn't think he had to. He was retired. He lived very nicely for a poor man.

The house in Florida my grandfather built is now for sale.  The realtor listing has some really nice drone footage of the house and grounds. The link is only good until 4/21. Know anybody who wants a cool house in Florida?

The Garden Grows On

Erythronium

Chionodoxa

Rip Van Winkle

Trilliums

Puschkinia

Obliterated Bloom Day

Five inches of snow, a long stretch of 14 and 9 degrees of low on a 30mph breeze pretty much obliterated the bulk of the daffodil show for the year.

The daffodils were laid low. Bloom was lost to the bitter cold. I can see that now.

At least the ones that were in bloom will hold their color for a while. I can see that now.

It was a cold day for the hellebores.

Just to seal the deal of an Obliterated Bloom Day, some damn varmint ate all the crocus blooms that survived quite happily buried in the snow. I can see that now.

I got my first easy office visit, secondary cataracts, laser fix on the first eyeball done yesterday. The improvement in my vision was immediate and dramatic. The change was shocking. My eyes were bad. The incredible detail I could now see was overwhelming my brain so much I had to shut my eyes off and go to bed. My brain was not used to that anymore. 

The other eyeball now feels like it has a wad of gum stuck in it. Two more weeks of that. It's messing with my head.

The crocus keep on blooming, sending up more flowers to get eaten. I can see that now.

The native Trout Lily, Erythronium americanum, was unfazed. I planted these in three different locations at the same time and this spot has become a quickly expanding large colony. It has been fun to watch.

The garden grows on. There are many bloom days ahead. In two more weeks they should all be in focus again. I expect it will be about that amount of time for the surviving daffodils to start blooming again. There are plenty of backup bulbs in the garden of Bulbarella Stinze next door.

When I'm 64

Will you still need me 

Will you still feed me 

When I'm 64?

We went for a walk in the gardens before the winter storm. 

That there would be proof of daffodils. Click on a picture for the slide show and wander. The daffodils were rising.