September 2004

Most plants start showing signs of fading by mid September, except for these 'Red Bull' Asiatic lilies, which we showed you in bud in August. They are part of that sorry looking batch of bulbs we planted in late April. As reported back in June, most of them started to sprout offsets and most of those budded up. These are the first of those to actually flower:) Have a quick peek at what they started out as back then. Most of them have come around to produce offsets which are now roughly 30" tall! With that kind of vigour they should be spreading themselves throughout our yard quite quickly. Certainly a companion planting of these 'Red Bulls' and an LA called 'Suncrest' is planned for next year.

Along with these 'Red Bull' bulbs we also planted some 'Polyanna' ones. While they haven't shown the same propensity for offsets, they do produce some nice stem bulbils, the earliest of which have started to show nice roots and have been transplanted into 5½ pots.'Polyanna' is a nice yellow with a sprinkling of speckles and a hint of orange in the throat and would make a nice contrasting planting with some 'Red Bull', 'Orange Beauty' or the 'Latoya' we got from Roak last year.

Of all the basils we planted this year, the purple one seems to be the one holding up the longest. It's just a mass of flowers. Or is that a mess of flowers, suppose you could argue either way.