Back to the Bulbs
“Up ahead they's a thousan' lives we might live, but when it comes it'll on'y be one.” John Steinbeck, the Grapes of Wrath
It’s been a minute since I wrote this blog like I used to do back in the strictly bulb days, when I talked about issues that matter to me and the platform of flowers was used to deliver a message and not just advertisements for upcoming sales.
Triteleia ixiodes ssp. analina-The Mountain Pretty Face
Originally described as Ornithogalum ixiodes in 1811, most likely by the botanist/librarian Carlsson Dryander, who was working for Joseph Banks at Kew during this time, from a specimen sent by the intrepid pacific northwest botanist Archibald Menzies. In the late 1800’s, the botanists of the day moved this from Themis, to Brodiaea, to Calliproa and back to Triteleia. Those botanists were as busy as they are today. Nothing incites wrath in me more as a nurseryman than the botanists constant naming revisions. Regardless, this is a wonderful little wildflower from the coniferous woodlands of Southern Oregon and into Northern California.
Allium platycaule-from Grizzly Peak overlooking Southern Oregon’s famed Shakespeare Town Ashland.
This weather (unseasonably hot and dry), has me evaluating the winners and losers in this new normal climate where we go from winter to summer without a transition in the seasons. I picked a couple of these wonderful bulbs to showcase as they are the champions of survivability in hot and dry, yet still put on a show that makes our garden experience richer. The heat of summer can come sooner in Southern Oregon and Northern California and these two bulbs seem to revel in the heat. Tough and easy to grow, they should be on everyone’s wish list for those tough spots in the garden.
The Steinbeck quote? Well the central tenants in that classic American book covers so much of the issues facing us today, the stuggle of the working class to keep its head above water, while being held down by the capitalist machine, the man made environmental catastrophes that we are clearly doomed to repeat like the fate of Sisyphus, The modernization (think AI/machine learning) that threatens to put the worker, even the productive one out to pasture (homelessness, carboard box housing).
Ya, I know the refrain, “stick to selling plants and not preaching”", well you only get one life, even though you can take it a thousand different directions, I’m going to say the things that come to mind, despite the business implications. All this talk of banning books in America is really bugging me, I read like a kid possessed when I was younger and the library was my favorite place to be ever. If you don’t like it, don’t read it, but don’t tell me what I can and can’t read.
Highs in the low 80’s seems like relief.
Cheers,
Mark