SNOWDROPPING

SNOWDROPS 
Blooming on Shaw Island,
San Juan Archipelago, WA., 
before the SNOW.
9 February 2021.

"Some gardeners think of the Winter Aconite as the first flower of spring but I have never done much with those pleasant little yellow flowers and the shooting of the “Snowdrop leaves is my particular signal that spring, even if far away, will come in time. It is strange that no country name compares Snowdrops with bells for they are bell-like as they swing to and fro. How they do swing on those delicate threads which connect flower to stem. You’d think they would be torn off. But they can stand any gale that blows. They yield to the wind rather than oppose it. A tree may be blown down in the night but never a single Snowdrop head is blown off. Their strength is that they know when to give in. There is moral in that somewhere.”

H.L.V. Fletcher, Popular Flowering Plants. 

🌿 THE SEEDS ARE IN 🌿

"Autumn that year painted the countryside in vivid shades of scarlet, saffron, and russet, and the days were clear and crisp under harvest skies."  S.K. Penman.

A glass of red?
The Crocosmia x 'Lucifer' seeds
complete the seed harvest for 2019.
There will be a few packets protected 
from the high humidity housed in labeled jars
at the Gatehouse shed this winter.
Stop by Reefnet Bay Road 
and pick up a favorite to send 
to a gardening friend.

Crocosmia x 'Lucifer'
First the seeds,
then in a year or two come these
beautiful flowers.
They will self-seed even without
our guidance but not invasively.
The photograph is taken at a sun-filled
border at Angel's island garden;
many stalks of ripe seeds have been
lovingly shared by her, over many years.