Last week was a busy week, and it started with the Friday before with a talk at the Texas State Master Gardener Conference in Conroe, Texas. The master gardeners have a fabulous display garden that the entire group pitches in to help with.They also had some Byzantine gladiolus blooming, but it looks like they were planted late or squashed by something because they were a little stunted. They will overcome that by next year.

This week is another week on the farm. Ann Swan's spider lily prints have made it here and I will begin to ship those out to the customers who have pre-ordered them. The renovations to the lake are completed and it is beginning to fill up with water!

Well, a special thanks to my new ebay friend "1wgw1" who sold me an excellent camera and shipped it immediately in nice packaging. It arrived just in time for our Byzantine Gladiolus Weekend. SOOOO, pictures and blogging is back!John and Erin came were absolutely wonderful as we prepared for the four hour open house.The Byzantines were just opening up, even though they are blooming about a week later than normal for us. We were also selling the last of our crinums that we had for sale before we put them in the ground later this week or early next.Brad was here sporting his Southern Bulb shirt and keeping things going in all the areas that we needed help.Some of the tour later joined us for a trip to the cabin.

Overall it was a great weekend. I drove to Dallas afterwards for another event that evening. I slept late the next day, Sunday. I took the day off and am now back at the farm. There are MANY e-mails stacked up, and I will be working through those today and the rest of the week, and I am sorry if you have not heard back from me yet. Hope everyone has a great week.

It looks like my camera is gone, gone, gone, and what a mental blow it does to my blogging desires. I still have a few pictures left over of some recent bloomers, and I will share those with you. In the meantime, I will be in the market for another Canon EOS 20D...I might need to buy a used one if anyone has any leads, my e-mail is chris@southernbulbs.com I will also let US Airways know about the incident.A couple weeks ago it was a our species tulips that ruled the day. Their colors were amazing, and they have now come back for us three years in a row, blooming wonderfully and propagating even better.The hoop petticoats also made an appearance and are always a delicate delight.

I have been taking a lot of pictures, but I am afraid I left my very nice camera on my US Airways flight in Phoenix and they are yet to find it. It was a Saturday flight and they sent the plane back to the hanger after we unloaded. My camera was up in the overhead storage. They assured me they would go look for it and call me back......

I am back in Texas now and spring came out overnight. Just two weeks ago we had snow. Last week it warmed up and we began shipping all of our orders out. The rest are shipping out this week.

We now have about a month to enjoy spring and then no doubt summer will be here. At the farm, an Ipheion 'Alberto Castillo' is blooming nicely. It was a gift from my host in Alexandria, VA when I spoke to the Potomac Chapter of the Rock Garden Society.

The tulips are really coming into bloom. Here they are accented by the Narcissus tazetta 'Grand Primo' bulbs in a shot I took yesterday.Monroe continues to impress me. They wrote a nice piece about my speech there a couple day ago titled "On the Hunt."

While having dinner in Monroe, I visited with one lovely lady who was diagnosed with West Nile about 10 years ago. She had to relearn everything, including how to speak. When her grandmother was a child, the local Episcopal church burned down. Her grandmother rode her bike by the church and the men who were repairing the church asked the then young girl if she would like some of the irises that had survived the fire. She said yes and carried them home on her bike, and the irises have been in the family ever since.The lightning lit up the sky last night in a fabulous storm that kept me up for awhile. Then came the rain, which I actually did not want as it will make for a muddy harvest today! We are almost done harvesting the bulbs and will begin shipping orders out on Monday!