Canna-ized

No sainthood for TPP.  Yesterday the spirit moved him to dig the canna bed so that Mrs. Phactor can plant tulips for the spring, several hundred tulips.  The bed is about 4 feet wide and some 16-20 feet long.  The cannas are a big landscape variety with purple pigmented leaves and aerial stems standing 6-7 feet tall.  They make a very dramatic, tropical looking backdrop and quite a screen from the street.  The rhizomes are as big around as TPP's forearm and a nice pick color.  Huge would be another apt description.  And you get back more than you planted.  No idea how many of these rhizomes have been given away over the years, but every year there's another wheelbarrow full of them.  Now the only trick will be to keep the squirrels from digging up the bulbs that get planted. 

This is war! Seriously! Bunnies beware!

"You don't tug on superman's cape, you don't spit into the wind, you don't pull the mask from the old long ranger" and you don't mess around with Mrs. Phactor by sitting there outside the breakfast nook window and eating her fancy tulips.  So let this be a warning to all lagomorph rodents, Mrs. Phactor all riled up is not someone to be trifled with.  By the time you had finished your tulip entree she was looking in the adverts to see if any "retired" greyhounds were available, you know, dogs with a name like Zap, or Flash, or Zip, or Bullet, or Death to Rabbits.  Yes, it's bad enough that you consume her flowers in her absence, but to sit there in full view and eat a bouquet of her tulips for breakfast, oh, that's a brazen bunny.  It's hard to get higher on the garden hit list than squirrels, but the bunnies this year are giving it a real go.  And TPP hasn't told her about the row of tulips you polished off behind the garden shed yet.  That could be the last straw.  Our wildlife friendly garden might become a bit less friendly.  Obviously the top predators are not doing their job, and need some help.  The joys of seeing a fox in the yard almost daily seem like such distant history (3 years ago), and the red-tailed hawks have not been seen now for a week.  Is someone out there offering them a better deal?  Nothing, nothing is better than tulip-fattened rabbit.  Top predators may send their applications to TPP.  We have immediate openings. 

Friday Fabulous "Flower" - Tulips

Our early spring gardens provide a lot of yellow, white, and pink, and so Mrs. Phactor has planted clusters of tulips, mostly species tulips because of their naturalizing ability, to provide early spring splashes of shocking color. This is a variety of Tulipa kaufmannii, and while only about 6-8 inches tall, they make their presence known.