Even a Trillium Is Up

Illinois had a couple of remarkably warm weeks. Wear shorts if you can find where you put them last fall; wear sandals; give up on finding light shirts and buy a new one! Of course, now it's settled down to forecasts of storms and possible snow, and salesmen in Home Depot trying to remind people that it was too early for tender annuals are now trying frantically to get more delivered.

For two years, I've been trying to find a source for the burgundy-colored hen-and-chicken plants that are so easy to buy in Seattle. Finally I bought one of the ubiquitous plastic strawberry pots sold at all the supermarkets filled with purple H&C and brought it home and took 'em out, and put 'em in singly where I want them.

All those tulips I put in last year? The pink ones have already bloomed, and they're the ones I used as filler for so many spots all over, so they're very gratifying. As the early daffodils dropped, these pink blazers came on, and now more and more of the older tulips are open too. Actually, the colder weather doesn't hurt tulips at all. The two surviving stands of Christmas Rose are sturdy and spreading. The white ones were blazingly white and very early, and now they're green; the Oriental ones are purple, and they've gotten taller and taller after they bloomed, and paler, too, so they're pink and purple and a very healthy stand. The foetidus, though, may have died for good. I don't see any sign of it.

And between these two hellebore groups, to my great delight I find the trillium that I brought home from Joe's last year. Two big purply leaves. No bloom yet, but the colder and wetter weather should be wonderful for it!

I bought a copy of Troy and if the weather is really icky tomorrow, I'm going to sit down and study hunks.