Commonweeder

View from the office

I don’t expect much Bloom Day color in January when I take a photo from the window, but this time my plans were a total failure.

Hydrangea and Roses

You an see the dried hydrangea blossoms in back  of the roses which have amazingly kept a lot of dried foliage, but this does not count and blooms. Obviously, you’ll say. You don’t expect blossoms in the snow!

Grape Hyacinths

Last fall I started pulling these green strands up, thinking they were weeds. Not so. Grape hyacinths bloom and disappear in the spring – only to send up foliage shoot late in the summer. And they spread all over! But certainly no blooms.

Rosemary and Amaryllis bulbs

The rosemary is doing fine on  our southern enclosed porch but the amaryllis bulbs are a bust and I do not know why. They grew in a garden bed last summer, then I cut back the foliage and brought them in, potted them up and put them in a rarely used closet. I thought this was the correct process so  that when I brought them out and put them on a windowsill in the fall they would be sending out shoots and then glamorous flowers. Didn’t happen. The bulbs seem healthy, very firm, but no action.

Begonia

I have never grown a begonia and you can see I have a lot to learn. This grew nicely and I did repot it once, but I think my problem is not studying up on proper pruning.  I even have Tovah Martin’s book, The Indestructible Houseplant which does have begonia information. I’ll have to read it more closely.

My Asparagus fern

My asparagus fern does not bloom, but it grows happily in the one plant-available south window.

Walking Iris

Now this walking iris was given to me by a good friend in the spring – after it had bloomed. She said that the iris blossom  would grow from a stem that was inside these graceful leaves. I planted the clump she gave me and it grew energetically. When it was time to lift it and pot it up so that it would bloom in the early spring the clump had increased substantially. Three  pots!  Sometimes I think I can see is the beginning of a stem in the center of some of the leaves, but nothing too definite. But surely this is promising. Will I have a bloom on February Bloom Day? Will there be a hint of a bloom? Wish me luck.