Enhancing diversity, hope, and anticipation

A total of 273 plants flowering in our gardens in a single season is pretty good, but now is the time to prime the pump so to speak for next season. This is being accomplished by planting some new spring bulbs. One in particular puzzled the Phactor for several years; a small early flowering bulb with pale blue on white flowers looking a bit like a pale flowered squill, but many flowered on a small raceme like a hyacinth. Further they had somewhat dilated stamen filaments like another spring liliaceous bulb Chionodoxa, glory of the snow. The only place these flowers had been observed was in a neighbor's front lawn planted there by owners long past, and this being an historic neighborhood and all such surprises are not uncommon, and by and large most of us do not have the primal urge to dig them out. But lacking any means of systematically identifying such plants, there being no guide to exotic spring flowers, they remained a mystery until happening upon Puschkinia scilloides var. libanotica alba, and of course, it's supposedly related to both Scilla and Chionodoxa. Ta da! Unfortunately no image exists in my garden files; but wait until spring. Now we only have to find 26 more to push us to the 300 plants flowering thresh hold, but still there are some young shrubs that might come through for us in the coming year. And is this not the way of the gardener? Always looking to the coming season with hope and anticipation, sort of like being a Cubs fan but with a much better record of success. Don't you just once want a political candidate to say, "Gardening is my favorite passtime, and I wish to use my position to enhance the lot of gardeners everywhere by passing a universal mulch plan." Unfortunately what we get is insubstantial compost, especially here in Lincolnland. But more thoughts on this will have to wait for a less sunny day. Today we garden with optimism.