Emailed June 28, 2006. To subscribe, click here.
To reprint any of this material, simply credit www.oldhousegardens.com. © 2006

Friends of Old Bulbs Gazette

Old House Gardens, 536 Third St., Ann Arbor, MI 48103, (734) 995-1486

        I'm tired of hearing so much about maintenance-free gardens. If you aren't going to get out there and live with it, including take care of it, then what's the point of gardening anyway?
        Pamela Lord (American garden writer, founder of the Garden Book Club)

Has Our New Catalog Reached You Yet?

        We mailed our great new catalog two weeks ago, and we can tell it's reached a lot of you because you're ordering like crazy. (Thanks!)
        If it hasn't landed in your mailbox yet, don't worry. Bulk-mail can be slow and unpredictable (especially to the West Coast). Sometimes letting your mail carrier know you're waiting for it helps to speed delivery. And don't forget everything is available at www.oldhousegardens.com.
        If it still hasn't arrived by July 12, email us and we'll send you another one (and extend your discount deadline). Sometimes they just disappear!

Returning Customers: Order by July 16 and Save!

        Every year we say thanks to our returning customers by offering them a 5% discount. If you've ordered from us in the past, all you have to do is place your fall order by July 16 and we'll subtract 5% from it.
        If you're ordering from our website, don't try to figure out how to make it give you the discount. It's not quite sophisticated enough to do that, but we humans will be sure to do it before we actually enter and charge your order here.

Sprouting Across Time: Canna Poetry

        If you don’t already have a favorite poem about cannas, here's one we highly recommend. Inspired by our heirlooms (check out the dedication) and written by our good customer Diane Dees of Covington, Louisiana, it not only won a prize in the Binnacle Second Annual Ultra Short Competition (see http://www.umm.maine.edu/binnacle/short.asp) but just last month it was published in Australia's Bikwil magazine. Congratulations, Diane, and thanks!
Canna Mania
        by Diane Dees (for Scott K.)
Antique cannas startle me in the garden.
Bold leaves of bronze, olive finely striped,
green blades with vermillion veins, paint-box
blooms of sunrise and sunset, peaches and melons.
Watermelon-red slurped by ruby-throats
buzzing frantically around ancient rind.
Scarlet/yellow harlequin pinwheel,
random pats of butter streaked by Devon cream,
technicolor leopard skin,
lozenges of orange, orpiment flames.
sometimes Monet, often Rothko;
Victorian madness, sprouting across time,
mine for the price of a rhizome

Take a Peek at the 171st Annual Wakefield Tulip Show

        What do beer bottles and exquisitely beautiful tulips have in common? Every spring since 1836, tulip lovers in Yorkshire have exhibited their best Feathers, Flames, and Breeders at the Annual Show of the Wakefield and North of England Tulip Society. For snapshots and a brief report on this year's particularly good http://www.oldhousegardens.com/tulipshow.asp.

An Expert Says: For Tough Southern Daffs, Start with St. Keverne

        Mississippi daffodil expert Ted Snazzelle writing in the March 2006 edition of the American Daffodil Society's Daffodil Journal had this advice for modern hybridizers:
        "Where does a Southerner begin in hybridizing daffodil reverse bicolor cultivars which are both resistant to the narcissus basal rot fungus [common in the South] and also of exhibition quality? I think one should look to cultivars which have St. Keverne (1934, 2 Y-Y) in their pedigree or to St. Keverne itself. St. Keverne was used in hybridizing by the late Barbara Frye of Rosewarne because 'many of the progeny acquired valuable basal rot resistance, upright bud, and good stem.'"

Your Garden Memories: Finding Magic in the Gutters

        Remember when your backyard wasn’t something to groom and nurture but a place for adventure? Our good customer Karen Anne Kolling of Rhode Island sure does, and we hope her reminiscence here stirs some of your own happy memories of a time when even the weeds could be exciting.
        "In the first house we lived in, before I was nine, there was a lone blue iris in the backyard, left from some old planting. To me it looked magical and enormous. There was honeysuckle, too, and somehow I learned how to remove the petals and taste the sweetness of the flowers. The bushes were just the right size for hiding under and imagining being in a cave. There was a huge maple tree overhanging the garage gutter, and when enough leaves had collected in the gutters, tiny little maple seedlings would grow all along it. I remember pointing them out, in delight, to my dad a couple of times, which was promptly followed by Dad's cleaning out the gutters."

A Promising New Cure for Dementia: Daffodils

        Daffodils and dementia are two topics close to our hearts here at OHG. So when a friend sent us an article titled "Scientists hope daffodil crop will help tackle dementia," we knew we had to share it with you! For this fascinating story about Welsh farmers, modern medicine, and hope, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk/medicine/story/0,,1724358,00.html.

Heronwood's Closing Prompts Laughter, Advice

        Sometimes a little laughter is the best medicine. Mary Higgins of Cambridge, MA, emailed us recently:
"Heronswood is closing? That's horrible! I should have suspected something was up when those pig dogs stopped producing the print catalogue this year. . . . Please don't ever sell Old House Gardens to Wal-Mart or Haliburton."
        Don't worry, we won't! But we do agree with this advice from Tony Avent: "What's the lesson here? If you have a favorite nursery, patronize it. Are you one of those sitting there wishing you had sent in your Heronswood order earlier? Lesson learned: If you see a special plant at a mail-order nursery, don't wait because tomorrow may be too late."
       To read Tony’s thoughtful post-mortem, see http://www.plantdelights.com/New/.

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