Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Shades of Muscari

I am still waiting under cool and cloudy skies for everything to bloom...so here are the muscari currently blooming in my yard. I took these pictures with my newly repaired Canon powershot S50 5.0 megapixel camera. The front lens cover (which doubles as the on/off switch) got stuck and stopped working around New Years. We had a manufacturer's warranty, but they refused to honor it, saying that the damage was caused by us dropping the camera (we knew we hadn't). It's easy enough for them to say we dropped it; how do we prove we didn't other than to point out the lack of scratches or obvious damage to the camera? Anyhow, with the bitter taste of warranty/insurance companies in our mouths, we had a local camera place repair the camera for a decent price and now I'm back to the Canon. I was using a 7.0 megapixel Nikon, but I kinda liked my old Canon better. It records the colors more accurately.

Back to the flowers...this is Muscari botryoides "Album"...less common thus MORE EXPENSIVE than the blue kind. It has multiplied a bit over the past year, maybe not to the degree the blue ones have.
I purchased this bulb two years ago simply because "I don't have one of those" (or at least, Resident-Lawnmower-Man says this is my usual shopping excuse). This is Muscari latifolium, the flat-leaf muscari. It doesn't really make me want to jump up and down.
Finally, Muscari armeniacum, the regular Armenian grape hyacinth. It is a lovely color, with its little clusters of blue with the tiny white rim on the bottom. It is very hardy. I grow it in full sun. The ones in part shade did not perform as well.
Well, we are supposed to have freezing temperatures (-2 Celsius) Friday night, so it will be another week before I consider putting the annuals out!

1 comment:

kate said...

I love the white Muscari. Those are cool!! At least the resident lawnmower man sounds tolerant of 'must have' plant purchases.

Last night, while watching the weather, it showed La Ronge to have been the warmest place in SK yesterday. We are expecting -2c tonight so I'm bringing in a bunch of my houseplants which I took out thinking they'd be safe. Nope!

You are smart keeping your annuals in for another week.