August 2005

August is pretty much the end of the lily season for us. We get the usual suspects of course, but we had a pleasant surprise with the showing of this lovely orange Trumpet Lily. Haven't the foggiest idea what it is at the moment, nor where it came from, it's just nice to see it.

It is a single bloom and the stem it is one is rather spindly, not beefy enough to hold the flower upright, hopefully next year it will have matured sufficiently to not only hold the inflorescence upright but also have more than just the one flower.

Since writing this I talked with my sister-in-law Sue and she says that what we have here is 'African Queen' which apparently they had a few years ago and would like to have again. We'll try for pollination and hopefully seed later in the fall.

As said, by the time the first week of August rolls around lily season is pretty much over for us. These 2 stems of 'Casablanca' are among the very last of those heavenly scented lilies we have. It was a bit of a surprise to see 2 stems since we only have one bulb, but we ain't complainin'.

Last year, when we dug up all the bulbs out of a busted pot, we were able to get some bulblets peeled off the main 'Casablanca' bulb and three of those are doing pretty good actually. Hopefully we can get them grown to a large enough size next year so we'll have them bloom in 2007.

Sunday August 7th we were looking for some plastic saucers for some of our pots and we cannot go into a nursery without checking to see what they have in perennials, amongst which Hostas rate high on our list.

"Look dear, they have a 20% off sale on all their perennials". Well that's all the invite I needed and I started to nose around. I kept being drawn to this unusually coloured one labeled 'Platinum Tiara', Waita kept going towards a variegated Fuchsia and both ended up in the trunk of the car when all was said and done.

When you pick up the pot this Hosta is in you cannot help but notice there is actually a fairly nice clump of 'em and I'm very tempted to lift it and divide it.

I haven't decided yet where it will find a permanent home, but where-ever that is it will be a reasonably sunny location in order to keep the pale colouration. Apparently 'Platinum Tiara' is a sport of 'Golden Tiara' and I know that cultivar varies greatly in its colours depending on how much sun it receives. Both Tiara's apparently are fertile and certainly 'Golden Tiara' has set a ton of seed for us this year, let's hope our new 'Platinum Tiara' as well is mature enough to flower for us next year.

This is the other purchase for that day, a nice variegated form of a perennial herbaceous Fuchsia. Unlike the Hosta, we think we have found where we'd like to plant this: as a solitary plant in a new urn style pot we bought at month's end to turn it into a real focal point in the yard.

This probably is Fuchsia magellanica gracilis variegata, but there was no tag in the pot to confirm or contradict.

There's nothing like one of our 6-legged friends to remind us that fall is just around the corner. More cobwebs, fog, heavy dew, return to normal Pacific Time, it will all be upon us soon.