Daffodil Blogorama 2012

Narcissus Nirvana is back with the 2012 Daffodil Blogorama (a round-up of blog posts about daffodils) and the annual meeting of the American Daffodil Society. If you're anywhere close to Towson, Maryland, rush over and revel in the flowers and fellowship at the Annual Meeting, April 20-22.

For those of us who can't make the Annual Meeting, two quick glimpses of New Hampshire daffodils from my friend, Lynn Felici-Gallant.

Lynn's combination of nodding Narcissus 'Thalia' and Veronica peduncularis 'Georgia Blue' in the New Hampshire garden Lynn left last year. That transition story was on a podcast with Andrew Keys at Horticulture magazine.

Lynn is Merchandising & Marketing Manager here at the independent retail garden center and wholesale grower, Pick of the Planet, in Greenland, New Hampshire.

The 2012 Daffodil Blogorama tour of the world begins now, starting in New Zealand and moving West around the globe. Click on the name of the blog to see a daffodil story:

* Enjoy the adventures of Mary "Moosey" planting daffodils with her horticulturally inclined kitten at Moosey's Country Garden in New Zealand.

* Kathy Purdy of Cold Climate Gardening in New York fesses up with a romantic tale of why Narcissus poeticus is her favorite flower.

* We love daffodils, but they don't love other flowers in vases. Joene Hendry delivers a horrible warning from Joene's Garden in Connecticut.

* An ode to Narcissus 'Mount Hood', by yellow-dissing John Markowski who's An Obsessive Neurotic Gardener in Pennsylvania.

* The Queen of Seaford, Janet, now reigns in South Carolina and is taking royal liberties by combining her daffs in arrangements with other spring flowers.

* Kate's Garden Journal from Ohio is on "D" for daffodil. Or should it be "F" for forcing?

* Susy Morris at Chiot's Run in the Ohio countryside kindly created a charming daffodil parade for me. You'll love it too.

* Tyla is a daffodil specialist at All About Daffodils in Alabama and she's breaking up with 'February Gold' in one of the funniest daffodil posts ever. Music video included!

* Have you tried daffodils in containers? Tips for success from Debbie Teashon at Rainy Side Gardeners in western Washington.

* Claire Splan wants to know just how pink a "pink" daffodil really gets in An Alameda Garden.

* Wrap up with me, on a quick Daffodil Planter tour of Daffodil Daydreams weekend at famed Filoli.

Thanks to all the bloggers for sharing their work!

Can't get enough?

First Daffodils is now a Facebook page where people from all over the world send photos of the first sightings of daffodils in their towns. Order a daffodil note cube from them.

If you can't attend the National Show this year, check out the American Daffodil Society website for answers to all your daffodil questions. Join the American Daffodil Society and a daffodil society near you.

To leave a comment, click on the word COMMENTS below

For a free email subscription to this blog, go to the upper-right sidebar

Daffodil Daydreams at Filoli 2012

Cue the Dynasty theme music! Filoli was introduced to the world as the set for that wacky TV show, but these days there's not a diamond necklace or giant shoulder pad in sight.

The Woodside, California garden is hailed as one of the most beautiful in the U.S. Filoli is an official Display Garden for the American Daffodil Society, and each spring it celebrates a long weekend of Daffodil Daydreams.

A gracious transition from the formal gardens, looking West to the Santa Cruz Mountains, with daffodil accents.

The daffodils in the borders and orchard were not at their peak, but daffodil containers, such as these lining the steps to a rear door of the house, made up for that.

The garden pavilion known as the summer house or tea house was in on the daffodil celebration too!

The Northern California Daffodil Society set up tables of information about daffodils; their nationally known experts gave lectures and garden tours.

The NCDS flower display provided a close look at the range of daffodils that do well in this part of the world.

Under the Chanticleer rooster weathervane, the former garage was charming with more pots of daffodils. Yes, even those double daffodils looked good to me. I must have been distracted by the contents of the building (as you can see from the sign below). More on that next time!

Queen Elizabeth gives New Year Honours to gardeners

Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip are shown a new vegetable patch by a Buckingham Palace gardener. (Photo courtesy The Telegraph)

Queen Elizabeth II has pronounced gardening an honourable profession.

In the annual New Year Honours List she acts on behalf of the government and gives titles and medals to hundreds of politicians and their pals. Some worthy citizens who have served their country are commended too.

The Queen also has a few awards that are her own personal gift, and this year she recognized four gardeners.

No doubt as we weed and hoe we wish that someday, someone would notice our efforts. These lucky four had The Queen notice and reward them. Let's take a look at the gardens where they toil.

Sandringham House, The Queen's residence in Norfolk, England

(Photo courtesy KL Magazine)

People who live in glass houses...well, they apparently get gold medals. Royal Victorian Gold Medals.

David James Benefer, RVM. Glasshouses manager, Sandringham Estate (he has previously been awarded the Silver Royal Victorian Medal).

Highgrove House, Prince Charles' country home in Gloucestershire, England

(Photo courtesy Highgrove)

Royal Victorian Medal (Silver) to Mrs. Marion Rose Cox. Part-time Gardener, Highgrove House.

The Queen on the grounds of Balmoral, her estate in Scotland

(Photo courtesy The Telegraph )

Royal Victorian Medal (Silver) to Joseph MacLugash. Woods Foreman, Balmoral Estate.

Savill Garden, Windsor Castle, England

(Photo courtesy Charlotte Weychan)

Royal Victorian Medal (Silver) to Graham Passmore Stone. Horticulturalist, Crown Estate, Windsor.

Dr. Shirley Sherwood at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery, Kew Gardens, England

(Photo courtesy Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew)

The government fished up this garden great and The Queen will give the Order of the British Empire to Dr. Shirley Angela Sherwood. Botanical Art Collector. For services to Botanical Art.

All hail Shirley for her astonishing collection, now safely stashed in an eponymous gallery at Kew Gardens; the first gallery ever to focus on botanical art.

As for the rest of us, we'll have to name a lot of plants after The Queen in her Diamond Jubilee Year and see if that gets us on the list.

To leave a comment, click on the word COMMENTS below

For a free email subscription to this blog, go to the upper-right sidebar

Announcing the Daffodil Blogorama winners!

Photo: ori2uru

Daffodil season may be over, but five lucky readers will have daffodil note cubes to cheer them through the rest of the year. Perfect for jotting down bulb orders!

The blind, random selection yielded the names of Claire, plaisanter, Angela, Jan and Kathy.

I will send the names to First Daffodils 2011, our generous prize donor, and she will ship the prizes. If you didn't win, you can still order your own note cubes at her site.

Why so long for this announcement? I was hither and yon, at flower shows, and then entranced by my own daffodil season. The last bloom was poeticus Narcissus 'Actaea'. What was yours?

To leave a comment, click on the word COMMENTS below

For a free email subscription to this blog go to the upper-right section of the sidebar

Daffodil Blogorama 2011

Narcissus Nirvana returns, with the second annual Daffodil Blogorama (a round-up of blog posts about daffodils) and a daffodil notecube giveaway from First Daffodils 2011.

First, the giveaway

The daffodil notecube giveaway is courtesy of First Daffodils 2011 -- a photo blog that chronicles daffodils coming up all over the world each spring.

The blogger makes daffodil note cubes with William Wordsworth's poem on the sides, and she is kindly donating five note cubes as prizes, one each for five lucky readers.

Enter by going to the First Daffodils 2011 site and looking at the photos. Then return here and leave a comment at the bottom of this post. Tell me which photo you like best and why. If you have trouble leaving a comment here, you can also enter with a comment on my Facebook Wall

Five winners will be randomly chosen from the comments. Contest closes April 8 at midnight PDT. The giveaway is open to anyone in the world with postal delivery.

The daffodil note cubes are reasonably priced and make perfect gifts for daff-loving friends. And Mother's Day. Just saying. You can purchase the note cubes via a link at the First Daffodils site.

News from the annual meeting of the American Daffodil Society

Skilled photographer and award-winning daffodil grower Kirby Fong generously agreed to share photos from the annual show, held last week in Jackson, Missippi. Many thanks, Kirby!

Gold Ribbon for the best standard daffodil in the show. 'Angel Face' 3W-YYO

exhibited by Steve Hampson.

White Ribbon is for the best set of three standard daffodils. The winner was 'Loch Lundie' 2Y-O from a collection of twelve sets of three. Our photographer, Kirby Fong, was the exhibitor.

Bender Award for the best standard daffodil hybridized by the exhibitor. This "challenge class" is one of the few that accepts flowers grown in glass houses instead of outdoors. The winner was seedling 04-214 6W-W exhibited by Larry Force.

Daffodil Blogorama

The Daffodil Blogorama tour begins in California and moves East around the globe. Click on the name of the blog to see a daffodil story:

* Sue Langley profiles 'Ice Wings' in her Sierra Foothill Garden.

* I'm on the red carpet at Daffodil Planter with 'Misty Glen' as she wins the Wister Award.

* Claire Splan at An Alameda Garden explains how to propagate daffodil bulbs by scaling.

* Jayne Locas and the Paradise Garden Club planted 90,000 daffodils. See their photos at Daffodils Across the Ridge and scroll down that site to read Jayne's inspiring story "To Plant a Garden is to Believe in Tomorrow."

* Mississippi blogger Gail at Yardflower celebrates her late narcissi.

* Frances from Fairegarden in Tennessee offers a controversial technique for dividing daffodils.

* The Canadian sister act: Helen and Sarah of Toronto Gardens report on the daffodil's role as a symbol for the Canadian Cancer Society.

* Tyla reveals the true story of 'King Alfred' at All About Daffodils in Alabama.

* Trailblazing garden blogger, Kathy Purdy of Cold Climate Gardening in upstate New York, has stories about her heirloom narcissus.

*Kathy Jentz, editor and publisher of Washington Gardener magazine, showcases early daffodils (including 'Katie Heath') at Washington Gardener.

* Maryland flower photographer Patty Hankins at Beautiful Flower Pictures shows a group of tazetta narcissus photos.

* Janet is The Queen of Seaford in South Carolina, where she's planting a new garden with daffodils.

* Mary "Moosey" is in a category all her own. A pioneer in garden blogging, she was sharing online stories from Moosey's Country Garden in New Zealand before the word blog was invented. She posts about recycling unwanted daffodils from other gardens. Will she be able to resist buying bulbs? Find out.

Thanks to all the bloggers for sharing their work!

Ready to experience your first daffodil show?

There are shows going on all over the country this spring.

Plan to visit Baltimore for the 2012 national show. Daffodil questions? Check the American Daffodil Society website for answers. For the ultimate in daffodil fun and information, join the American Daffodil Society and a daffodil society near you.

To leave a comment, click on the word COMMENTS below

For a free email subscription to this blog go to the upper-right section of the sidebar

What if John Grisham were a garden writer?

I just finished one of John Grisham's legal thrillers, The Appeal. Gripping, and a change from my steady diet of garden literature.

I wondered why Grisham so often called his novels "The noun" (The Firm, The Client, The Chamber) -- and I also wondered, would he ever set one of his books in the world of horticulture?

If he did, it might sound something like this:

The Greenhouse

Chapter 16

Sam ran down the dirt road, finding his way by the light of the half moon, clutching the seed tray to his chest. The sprouts were all that remained of his years of botanical research on corn.

Was it only two months since George Luger had first visited Sam's University of Mississippi greenhouse lab?

As his feet thudded along the packed dirt, Sam's thoughts went back to the day when he accepted the research grant Luger offered.

What he had not realized until this evening was that Luger was the central actor in a corporate conspiracy that reached from Wall Street to the corn fields of the Midwest. A conspiracy that sought to destroy the hybrid corn Sam had developed.

The sprouts Sam carried were the last survivors of his hybrid corn -- corn that could grow easily without pesticides. This robust hybrid would dramatically increase corn crops all over the world, alleviating mass hunger.

And the pesticide companies wanted his hybrid wiped off the map.

Sam ran on, hoping he was heading for the highway, where he would hitchike into Jackson and find the one man who could help him. He knew the senior Senator from Mississippi, Taylor Thomas, was in Jackson tonight, and as head of the Senate Agriculture Committee he had the power to crush the pesticide companies.

Suddenly Sam was blinded by headlights.

Stop, Sam, boomed a man's voice, Come over here and get in the car.

Sam ran into a ditch at the side of the road, trying to see past the lights and find out who was talking.

Sam, said the voice again, It's Senator Thomas. I've been looking for you. We have to get into town fast.

Sam walked slowly to the car, peering into the darkness.

Hurry Sam, we don't have much time.

As Sam reached the car someone pulled the seed tray away from him. Sam tried to hold on and several seed plugs came away in his hands. Then he felt a sudden pain in the back of his head, and as he fell to the ground he heard the car drive off.

*****

And so, dear reader, what is your Grishamesque conclusion to this story?

To leave a comment, click on the word COMMENTS below

For a free email subscription to this blog go to the upper-right section of the sidebar

Adventures in canning: Plum jam and pink grape juice

Yellow plum, blue plum, zinfandel jam...

A guest post from award-winning poet, essayist, and radio presenter, Molly Fisk. Molly gardens in Nevada City, California. Her beguiling radio essays are broadcast on KVMR-FM and collected on two CDs, Using Your Turn Signal Promotes World Peace and Blow-Drying a Chicken. Read her new poetry collection, The More Difficult Beauty, and see Molly on her West Coast book tour.

For the seventh year in a row, I did not enter my plum jam in the County Fair. I watched the deadline approach and then waved when it went past.

Partly this comes from being caught up in the usual hustle and bustle — who has time to fill out one more form? And partly it’s because not much was ready to pick in early August, when the Fair entries are due.

Everything ripened late this year because of a cold wet May, and now, of course, it seems to all be happening at once. There are still peaches in the farmer's markets, next to the pumpkins, and strawberries, of all things — even a few plums are still on the trees. A friend of mine who runs a restaurant went picking at a secret location with some of her staff and brought me back her overflow of an amazing pink seedless grape, to the tune of twenty pounds or so.

My kitchen, which was spotless for two days due to my procrastinating about something else, is now full of big plastic storage containers of grapes, colanders separating pulp from juice, the Cuisinart with which I pulverized the plum skins to an edible size, water baths on the stove boiling jars and lids, and some open bottles of zinfandel, which I add to everything.

My four now-teenaged kittens have learned to play soccer with strawberries bobbing in the sink as well as grapes that have leapt onto the floor, and there are sticky pawprints on every conceivable surface.

I can't tell you how happy this makes me.

One of the things I miss from my upbringing is the chaos we could get up to in my parent's kitchen cooking together. My friend Peggy and I would pick blackberries all over town and then make jam and pies, or we'd go after plums in our and our neighbors' yards and my mother would make Chinese plum sauce.

Just the idea of people doing huge messy kitchen projects that will result in something, whether it's temporary, like dinner, or lasting, like 30 jars of jam to give away for Xmas, makes me feel as though everything's right with the world.

Everything, of course, isn't really right with the world.

What might become of us is up in the air and I think that understanding permeates almost everyones' thoughts in some way, together with confusion about what to do about it.

A friend just wrote a poem about the BP Oil Spill and included a line referencing the day it started, April 10, 2010: “If it was the end of the world as we knew it, we didn't know it.” Maybe the end of the world has already started. I, for one, can't tell. And maybe my jam-making frenzy is a futile effort to try to be safe when there's no way to be safe. I might put up enough jam this week for two years worth of peanut butter sandwiches, but knowing how to preserve fruit isn't going to do me any good when we're out of water, much less jars, lids, sugar and Sure-Jell.

What's going to do me the most good regarding an uncertain future is curiosity, love of living, and a respect for my own capacity to change. Which is why I'm boiling an insane number of grapes on the stove this morning.

I've never made grape juice before. Have you?

To leave a comment, click on the word COMMENTS below

For a free email subscription to this blog go to the upper-right section of the sidebar