Traces of Monet

Martin & Roni's (& George''s!) pond.

Spring is really here!

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The wisteria resumes it's duty - to hide the front water tank.


Love daisies of all sorts - always fascinates me that they are really a bunch of tiny flowers.


With irises, violas, pansies, wisteria, bluebells and honesty, there is a strong purple theme in the front garden.


Quinces have the most delicate pink flower.


A jasmine has found its way into the cumquat and thinks I haven't noticed.


And, and my brain is in flower!
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It might be dry, but...

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It may be dry, but the garden is looking lovely at the moment.
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Tulips from...?

When we arrived home there was a tulip flowering in our front garden. OK, nothing too special about that except we have been away and I have no idea who planted it or when.

True, it could have been me any number of years ago, it is a bulb after all. But I was of the impression that tulips need a cold winter to set the flower or some such. Melbourne does not get cold winters, not by tulip standards at least. You get flowers from tulip bulbs the first year you plant them and then never again.

So I went searching info and certainly the experts seem to agree that cold is needed for a tulip to flower. Some go so far as recommending that you store your bulbs in the fridge over winter. (An aside: once at work, in my incarnation as a food chemist, I was presented with a bag of 'onions' that hospitalised a guy who ate them. They were daffodil bulbs.)

As is often the case when you go looking for information, I found more than I had expected.

A quick association test (it's the psychologist in me):

Strawberries and ...
Abbott and ...
Heaven and ...
Tulips and ...

That's alright, I am not marking the papers.

The surprise to me is that tulips originate in Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan. The Dutch just have a good marketting system.

Just for good measure, the word tulip originates from a Turkish word meaning turban.

There you go.
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