Thursday, November 17, 2005
Anemones
Am I the only gardener who suffers from "out of sight, out of mind" syndrome? Every spring (all these pictures were taken last April) I just go gaga over windflowers (Anemone blanda). You would think therefore that I would have drifts of them parading proudly through the garden (if a plant four inches tall can be said to be parading). However, alas, I have only a handful of these little beauties, and it's all my fault. I adore these little anemones when they bloom, make a note to plant more, then by fall when the bulb catalogues show up in my mailbox, I've forgetten all about them. It's not helped by the fact that the catalogues usually list these little bulbs in a hodge-podge page at the end, with a miscellany of other little odds and ends. My dream of having large patches of these little charmers is also thwarted by the fact that my garden is too shady and too crowded for their liking, so they tend to seed out into the sunnier, invitingly empty, bark pathways, like the little blue anemone above, where they are appreciated, but often get stepped on, so their flowers get a little raggedy.I am equally enamored of the wood anemones (Anemone nemerosa). I would also admit that they persist rather than thrive here, as our summers are rather drier and hotter than they like, but persist they do, and I delight and ooh and ah over every one of them. Below are shown a single white, a semi-double, and a lilac.
// posted by IBOY @ 5:52 PM 
