Last March, we teamed up with the Trinity Trust in a cooperative effort to rescue bulbs from an abandoned lot in Fort Worth slated for a new development project. The president of the Forth Worth Organic Club first told me about the lot filled with campernelles off of Texas State Road 121. She organized her members, and with the help of the Dallas County Master Gardeners, and numerous staff from our corporate sponsor of the event Calloway’s nursery, and the staff of the Trinity Trust, we dug the bulbs and relocated them in Crow Park between the levees of the Trinity River.

A couple weeks ago, we went back to Crow Park to check on the bulbs. The park was in high spirits with a weekly soccer competition taking place. We went to the spot where we had planted the bulbs. After 3 weeks of being under 20 feet of water in the flood plains of the Trinity this summer, the bulbs survived and are coming up! There might not be any blooms this year, but their survival and growth this winter is not only a testimony to the bulbs, but a confirmation of a successful project with the Trinity Trust.

Thank you Calloway’s for providing water for all of us thirsty diggers!

She said we could dig bulbs. She didn't tell us she had twelve bulls also.

This picture was actually taken just north of the farm, on an old home site.

This winter I had the opportunity of visiting our good friends at "Petals from the Past," Jason and Shelley Powell. Jason had to rush off to Birmingham to deliver poinsettias, so Shelley and the dog showed me around.

As my companion and I drove to Petals from Birmingham, we were passed by a large cow doing 80 down Interstate 65.
Perhaps the highlight of the trip were the Asian persimmons. Their selections are non-astringent and tasted wonderful even that late in the season.
Shelley has done one of the best displays I have seen of our bulbs, pulling out an old wooden ladder and hooking them on the rungs.

Tuesday I awoke early in the morning so I could have breakfast with my good friend Jacob in Dallas. I drove back to the farm, where I looked at my calendar and realized I had a speech in Dallas that evening with the Dallas Historical Rose Society (DAHRS). I called Mr. Graves to confirm that they still planned on me coming. He said yes, and I headed to the train station to catch the 9:50 train to Dallas (my legs couldn’t take the drive again).

DAHRS was established in 1982 and to this day continues to work towards expanding the knowledge of old garden roses. They have a wonderful monthly publication called “The Yellow Rose,” and if you come to the meetings you might receive freshly shelled pecans like I did! Their website is www.antiqueroses.org.

In Dallas that evening, I gave my presentation. There were some familiar faces, previous customers, and well wishers. I enjoyed seeing them all! I also met Dean Oswald, who in conjunction with other members such as Mr. Graves has planned the Chambersville Heritage Rose Garden just north of McKinney. The garden is on the same grounds as Mr. Oswald’s tree farm, Chambersville Tree Farms (www.chambersvilletreefarms.com).

The roses are planted with far enough spacing to completely grow to their natural size and only minimal trimming is required. I was invited with a friend to see the garden the next morning, so at 6AM we left Dallas and headed north!

Dean gave us a fabulous tour of the facilities, but of course the real draw for me was bulbs that marked the original homesite. Dean and I went bulb hunting around the old gardens, and found wonderful stashes of spider lilies (Lycoris radiata), cemetery white iris (Iris albicans), oxblood lilies (Rhodophiala bifida), grape hyacinths (Muscari neglectum), and others. Nothing of the home could be seen any more, and while we were there nothing was blooming. However, in the grey winter landscape, the green foliage that had persisted for well over fifty years on this rocky site had a beauty all of its own.

Spider lily (Lycoris radiata)

Oxblood lily (Rhodophiala bifida)

Cemetery white iris (Iris albicans)

Grape hyacinths (Muscari neglectum)

Mrs. Graves, wife of Mr. Graves, told me the story of how as a girl her sisters and she would go to the seamstress that lived on that site. There they would be fitted for their ballet outfits. While they were waiting for their turn, they would play in the creek and catch crawdads. Then it was back to McKinney where they lived.

On our way out of town, we could not help but stop and peak over the fence at the Chambersville Cemetery, where the former residents of the home were probably buried.

We have some white Roman hyacinths blooming in the field. Some of our first came from the little town of Cameron, Texas. I remember the lady, Mrs. Gonzales, who let us have some. Her father served in World War I. She had some wonderful stories and let us harvest some and replant a row along her sidewalk. A couple years later she had passed away. Somebody else moved into her home and now somebody else lives in it.

The fragrance of white hyacinths is beyond description, and it will lift up any person on a gray winter day such as this one. Smells bring back memories, and it reminds me of my earliest days of bulb hunting. The whites have proven for us to be the most vigorous of the Roman hyacinths, out pacing the pinks and the blues.

Roman hyacinths! How do we tell the difference between the real deal and a Dutch hybrid that has persisted yet lost it’s tight double form? Sometimes we can’t tell, but we do know that if it came from Elizabeth Lawrence’s garden like these pink hyacinths did, we know it’s old. The owner of the home did not know when Ms. Lawrence planted them or where they came from, but she did find a reference to roman hyacinths in Ms. Lawerence’s book “Gardens in Winter.”

These pink Roman hyacinths were from the garden of bulb enthusiast Cynthia Mueller. Her picture of the flowers shows a vase that functions as a nicely scaled holder for the smaller inflorescence of flowers. However, do not let the size fool you, for as you can see in the picture below, Roman hyacinths really know how to hold their own in the garden setting!

Because it was snowing here in Northeast Texas, I decided to stay in Tyler today. The Tyler Public Library is close, and I will see if they have a copy of “Gardens in Winter.” I think I might walk. How many days in Texas do we get to take a nice stroll in the snow?

There were more paperwhite blooms just days ago. That was before the neighborhood cat was hit by a car, buried by the children among the bulbs, and the paperhite blooms picked and laid over the gravesite. Grace allowed the site to be among her flowers at the home she is restoring in Brenham, Texas. Her 1920's Central Texas cottage has paperwhites (Narcissus tazetta papyraceous) in the winter and oxblood lilies (Rhodophiala bifida) in the fall. Who knows what the home might have in the spring?Across the street is a large Victorian home. Most small Texas towns have a few towering Victorian masterpieces, and Brenham is no different.
This is a close up picture of the paperwhites.

It is paperwhite season! There are hundreds of different varieties that were once on the market, and many of them can still be found blooming in old yards around the South. This picture was taken in front of a nice home in Dallas, where paperwhites were combined with white flowered cyclamen. The selection is most likely Narcissus 'Ziva' imported from Israel. Who says you can't put white on white!

On the farm, our double Roman narcissus are beginning to bloom (Narcissus tazetta ‘Double Roman’). In the trade, there is a variety known as Constantinople. Some claim it is the same plant. I would like to find out. This next fall I plan to order some and compare. Both claim to be the double form of the Chinese Sacred Lily.

We are digging out dirt for our lake, from which we plan to irrigate. Beneath our sandy loam soils, some beautiful colors of earth have emerged. I took someone on a walk with me through the lake bottom. I was told about the earth pigments I was walking on, and soon running my hand through. We dug the dirt together, and I never knew that I would enjoy digging dirt so much. Little did I know, but the dirt in our buckets was the same colored earth that has adorned buildings throughout the centuries.

The dirt contains every color of the color spectrum, and that makes it different than the synthesized colors we are used to. When the sun hits the dirt, an array of colors delights the eye, and even though we might not realize it, our minds fully capture the beauty and are drawn in. Synthesized colors contain one color, and when we see the paint on the wall, that is the only color we see. They remind me of people I like; their personalities are not fabricated reactions. Their responses to life are formed from the pigments that form their very being, and the more you get to know them, the more you are drawn to them in an unexplainable way.

I took the train to Dallas this weekend. It cost me $19 one way. That is less then what I pay in gas. It was 2 hours late, but I asked the station veteran in Dallas about how to better time the train. For Mineola, she said you have to call Little Rock and find out the departure time from their and the timed arrival to Marshall. From Marshall you can easily calculate the time to Mineola and that is when you should plan on being at the station. From Dallas going to Mineola, you need to call and find the departure time from Clebourne. Once it leaves from Clebourne, it is one hour away from Ft. Worth, and unless the train is held up at the tower ( I don’t know what tower), you can calculate the time to Dallas. “Delays aren’t that bad,” she said “considering the train started off in Chicago.”

I walked to downtown Dallas and worked on e-mails, customer responses, some bulb orders, and other computer items. Before I left, I put the latest gift certificates in the mail with personal notes because they were late and slipped through our system. I’m here for the weekend and then will take the train back. Tuesday I am with the Wood County Master Gardeners, my first talk of the year!

“But what held his [Hornblower’s] attention most was two long boxes against the great stern windows. They were filled with earth and were planted with flowers__ hyacinths and daffodils, blooming and lovely. The scent of the hyacinths reached Hornblower’s nostrils where he sat. There was something fantastically charming about them here at sea.

“I’ve been successful with my bulbs this year,” said Collingwood, putting his letters in his pocket and following Hornblower’s glance. He walked over and tilted up a daffodil bloom with sensitive fingers, looking down into its open face. “They are beautiful, aren’t they? Soon the daffodils will be flowering in England—sometime perhaps I’ll see them again. Meanwhile these help to keep me contented. It is three years since I last set foot on land.”

An excerpt from the Horatio Hornblower series "Hornblower and the Atropos."

It warmed up in Texas, and perhaps that was the reason these beautiful pink hyacinths are blooming. The fragrance is of course magnificent and the blooms spectacular.



And if any one is curious why I have not been blogging as much, this is what happens every time I sit down. It was taken without my permission while at a friends home, but I suppose I will allow it to go onto the website.