And the winner is…

(obligatory spring photo of the GWI property)

No, not the “best blog” thing; I lost that as I knew I would. It did lead to a lot of traffic, and, rather surprisingly, my inclusion on the “Garden Voices” section of Gardenweb.com has also led to a fair amount of hits. I find that “Voices” contains a confusing and daunting amount of material, so I'm glad so many are able to sift through it. It’s mainly a lot of people showing off their gardens. Which is cool, and which brings me to the title of this post:

Of all the tulips I put in the ground or planters last fall, including these:

(Single late: Maureen and Perestroika),
and these:

(Triumph and single early: Passionale and Princess Irene),

the Princess Irene is really the most delightful. You can’t see it here, but there is a faint purple stripe up the orange, a bit of ruffling, and a delicious citrusy fragrance. Fragrance in tulips is often overlooked, but there is quite a range, particularly with the doubles.

I also have a lot of species action, but they are tiny and lack the drama of the larger plantings. The two oddballs, Black Parrot and the T. acuminata, performed well, and I’ll post on them later.

Congratulations to my friend Ron, as well, who also did not take home a plaque from Artvoice (he was nominated in two artist categories), but he receives honors from me for maintaining his spring bulb efforts. He’s even got this way cool messy thing going on, which may be, in part, the result of my urging.