I hate winter! Most things in the garden are not helped by the cold and damp. Most of the roses have severe black spot and are crying to be pruned and de-leafed. Some, however, are still blooming and looking good.
Princess Margaret Rose bloomed several times in the rain of spring and the heat of summer and never looked good until now.
Caramella's still loaded with buds and blooms.
Koko Loco has lots of buds and Sunny South has put out its first bloom ever.
Lots of other things blooming in the garden too, including the Pineapple Sage, which is so happy to have been moved to the shade under a Viburnum, and the constantly blooming historic irises.
Here are the last Japanese Anemone to bloom and the first Narcissus to bloom.
Here's a gorgeous Clematis bloom. I'll have to see if it's named on a garden bed map. I don't recognize it. The Nerine is virtually exploding into bloom all over the garden.
And here are some disappointments. This red rose, as lovely as it is, is not the Ronald Reagan I was so happy to find in a local nursery earlier this year. And then there's the Arum, a perennial disappointment. All of the shady areas in the garden will look like this until February or March. How I despise this stuff! There's a little Azalea trying to bloom under it in the top left corner of the photo and a new small Camellia valiantly raising its buds through this junk in the bottom center of the photo.
I placed an order with B&B because they were having a half-price sale. The website informed me that there was a surcharge for shipments West of the Rockies because the cold-weather season had begun. The surcharge turned out to be a hefty one ($25.00), but it guaranteed delivery within 2 or 3 days, so I agreed to it.
A few days later, I received an e-mail from B&B, informing me that some of my choices had already sold out. I called and added some things to the order because it stuck in my craw to pay more for shipping than for the merchandise. The grand total came to $95.46 -- $54.20 for the bulbs and $41.26 for the shipping.
I then placed an order with Holland Bulb Farms. These were also on sale, but not at half-price. The total was $36.32 -- $27.37 for the bulbs and $8.95 for the shipping.
The two packages arrived on the same day. They had been mailed on November 30th and arrived on December 5th. They weighed the same - 5.7 pounds.
The photo has to be enlarged for the comparison. The bulbs on the left are from Holland Bulb Farms and the ones on the right are from B&B. There are more bulbs in the B&B order -- 90, in contrast to 64 from HBF, but most of them are smaller (not because they're deficient or inferior in any way, but because they're little species tulips rather than big double ones).
The bulbs are of comparable quality, they weigh the same amount, and they took the same amount of time to get here (6 days instead of the 2 or 3 for which B&B charged me an extra $25.00). Is there any good reason that the package on the left cost $8.95 to ship and the one on the right cost $41.26 -- almost 5 times as much? It didn't get here sooner and the excuse about the cold weather just doesn't wash: B&B is in Virginia and HBF is in Wisconsin, which is no one's idea of a balmy tropical location!
Guess where I'll be buying bulbs from now on. Holland Bulb Farms also included a coupon in the box for $5 off my next order.
So here's a list of what I got, just in case the tags get lost later. From Holland Bulb Farms (all tulips): 12 'Lucky Parrot,' 10 'Belicia,' 10 'Carnaval de Nice,' 12 'Focus,' 10 'Miranda,' and 10 'Wirosa.' From Brent & Becky's: Narcissus -- 5 'Delnashaugh,' 5 'La Belle'; Tulips -- 5 'Monsella,' 5 'Toronto Double,' 5 'Rem's Favorite,' 5 'Queensland,' 5 'Flaming Parrot,' 5 'Uncle Tom,' 5 'Annelinde,' 20 'Little Beauty,' 5 humilis 'Alba Coerulea Oculata,' 10 whittali; 5 Corydalis solida 'George P. Baker'; 5 Trumpet Lily 'Pink Perfection.'
I don't want to lose those Pink Perfection lilies, so I'll note here that they're planted in the gopher baskets previously occupied by Priscilla Burton, Feu Joseph Looymans, and Special Occasion. Everything else is in containers.
My feelings about Hortico are comparable to the way I'd feel about a beloved child or a friend of long standing who goes through a difficult phase, has to be sternly reprimanded and then ignored for some time, and ultimately seems to have recovered and earns guarded trust.
Years ago, I ordered roses from Hortico without fear. They did have a silly habit of listing many roses that were unavailable and putting them on "back order" (a misnomer, because they rarely appeared after that), but the roses they did send were wonderful and grew into large and vigorous rose bushes. Some of the largest rose bushes I own came from Hortico in those years.
Then they went into a slump and I started receiving a few mislabeled roses in each order. The plants sometimes looked sickly or even dead, and worst of all, they occasionally left some out of the shipping box but never neglected to charge me for them.
I sent messages about dead, mislabeled, and missing roses to customer service, which invariably said I would receive replacements, but I never did. Finally, after a year and a half of correspondence, during which four different customer service representatives promised replacements that never arrived, I wrote to management and promptly received a box of roses labeled with all of the names of my dead, mislabeled, and missing roses. The only problem is that all of them were dead -- stone-cold dead. I realized there was no point in pursuing the matter and simply took them off my list.
In the last couple of years I'd been hearing rumors that Hortico had shaped up and was no longer guilty of any of those sins. Best of all, they were listing only the roses in stock, so there was no longer any chance of anything being put on "back order" for the next five years.
After Janice (sandnsea2) posted a photo of the roses she had just received from Hortico in the rose forum, I placed an order for nine roses. They arrived yesterday and they look really good. The accuracy of the labeling remains to be seen, of course, but if they turn out to be the roses I ordered, Hortico will be back on my list for annual orders.
They are supposed to be: Magic Beauty, Martha Allen, Audrey Wilcox, Creme Caramel, Darling Annabelle, Expression, Sweet Juliet, William Morris, and Just Joey. All but Just Joey will be new to my garden.
Hortico's prices and shipping charges are exceptionally low: The nine roses cost $134.91 ($14.99 each) and all nine were shipped to me from Ontario for $19.00.
This is the box from Vintage Gardens. Rabelais, Magnolia, and Buzzie have been in it almost continuously since the roses were removed.
"Room for one more?" Roger asks.
Why, oh why, do I shop online? Sue and I went to a couple of nurseries yesterday and I bought plants that put everything online to shame. Just being silly, of course, because most of the things I buy online aren't available locally. I have such a passion for cold-weather alpine plants and the nurseries here are at sea level in balmy California.
The weather amazed us. We dressed in layers, the way we're supposed to in December, but the temperature went up to 76 degrees soon after we left my house. Good thing it was layers. So easy to take a few off and still look decent.
I bought a full flat (16 four-inch plants) of Primula acaulis (Primlet mix) and a full flat of ruffled pansies (Frizzle Sizzle mix).
I bought almost a full flat (15 plants) of mixed wonderful things: Primula 'Glorious Laced Gold,' Primula 'Glorious Laced Silver,' Nemesia hybrid Juicy Fruits 'Watermelon,' 3 Nemesia hybrid Sunsatias (Cranberry Improved, Mango, and Kumquat), Omphalodes cappadocica, Aquilegia 'Winky Double Red-White,' Petunia Supertunia 'Red,' Petunia Supertunia 'White Russian' (LOL), and five Calibrachoas -- C. hybrid Superbells 'Sweet Tart,' 'Cherry Star,' 'Red,' and 'Blackberry Punch,' and C. hybrid Million Bells 'Terra Cotta.'
I also bought three Clematises, from left to right: Freckles, Belle of Woking, and Rebecca. Belle of Woking has some blooms and buds on it.
Such fun! Now I have to plant all of them, however.
