Okay, here are my
I terms:
Interveinal Chlorosis. From the AHS Dictionary:
Interveinal chlorosis is a yellowing of the leaves between the veins with the veins remaining green. In plants with strap-like leaves such as the daylily this results in a striped effect. While there are several possible causes, this symptom frequently indicates a nutritional imbalance.
This picture was taken this afternoon from my garden.
It shows a volunteer seedling (still in place, near the pod parent plant) of 'Sacrament of Healing'. (I have two other volunteers from that plant. One was dug last year, the other one is on the other side of the mother plant. What can I say... I often leave the pods on long enough that they crack open, and some seeds go flying when I try to harvest.
And obviously I have been lax on fertilizing...
)
So much for the official terms... now for the fun stuff...
Iberis
A garden full of nothing but daylilies would be a very boring place out of season (and for that matter, in my opinion, somewhat boring even in season...YMMV). Since I also have a small Moon Garden, I am fond of white flowered and silver foliaged things. On the outskirts of said garden (but not (yet) inside it) I grow a lot of
Stachys and
Iberis. I love the white flowers in the mid-late winter. (Winter for me, that is.)
Two pictures from the garden this afternoon follow. Excuse the mess... I don't have enough garden time, so spring cleanup has barely gotten started...
The sundial area has been very difficult to keep the iberis growing in, but I am determined, and so it is going to be reworked this spring.
Iberis and sundial
Iberis and
Euphorbia myrsinities (and weeds...)
Euphorbia myrsinities is a great structural plant, and its flowers will add some color to the garden in another month or so. It does tend to spread itself around a little, but not as badly as
Euphorbia characias wulfenii, which I have in a shady part of the garden (and which I think of as "the Wolf Guy"
).
Most of the
Iberis in the garden is a motely collection of cheap 4" and 5" pots from the nursery (cultivars (if any) unknown), and iirc a few named cultivars (whose names were lost
). On my nursery runs this week, I picked up 6 x 1 gal pots of 'Alexander's White'.
http://portlandnursery.com/pla... I am thinking of ripping out all of the small iberis plants around the sundial, amending the (horrid acidic clay) soil, and then replanting with the newly purchased 'Alexander's White'. (The nameless iberis can always be recycled elsewhere. This garden sucks up plants like there is no tomorrow.)
Irises
Irises are a harbinger of the daylily season. When the irises are in bloom, the early daylilies are not far behind. Here is a picture of part of my Moon Garden from May of 2012, after a recent renovation. (Things are a bit different now: some daylilies were exchanged, some licorice plants died and were replaced (with different ones, grrr
), my favorite Shasta Daisy, 'Ice Star', died
, some plants are now overgrown.) All of the daylilies shown are near-white daylilies. The Iris in the foreground (lower right) is 'Arctic Express'.
Iris 'Arctic Express' (a better picture - of the iris, that is)
Finally, let's talk
Imagination... and maybe, sometimes,
Inspiration. I think that at least the first of these attributes drives those of us who are hybridizers or pollen dabbers; we
imagine a more glorious flower, on a plant with outstanding attributes, and strive towards that goal. We may also be given
inspiration... either by the example of those hybridizers who have gone before us, or perhaps as a blessing, in the form of
insight (there's another
I!) into an
inspired choice of parents for our
imagined seedling.
Of course, these qualities are not limited to the hybridizers... Does it not require
imagination to come up with a pleasing garden design? And who can say that the truly great and memorable gardens are not also
inspired?
