Beautiful Fritillaries

The fritillaries are starting their serious blooming.  I think I'll get more for next year.  They are very nice.  I wish, though, that they were all coloured.  The first to bloom, while elegant enough, is a bit dull:

...compared to what it could be:

Op Art

I am excited about the fritillaries.  I can already discern some of the lovely patterns on their petals.

The less-far-along flowers have a dark vein pattern which mimics the pattern the flowers will soon have.  

Fits and starts (fritillaries)

Harkening back to the survey pictures I took on Tuesday, there are some newbies in the side yard that I'm watching with great interest.  There is a new plant coming in with odd characteristics.  It's not tall,  but it flops over willy-nilly.  It's got a flower developing, and I'm willing to bet it's a fritillary.  

Whatever it is, it's sort of close to the daylilies just to the north of the furnace flue.  I hope that they have different bloom times.  

Another quickie

I did dig up the front corner and put lots of yummy manure and compost in it for the new things, plus bone meal.  I planted all the snowdrops and crocuses and a good number of daffodils and tulips.  I even planted all of the new bulb irises.  I dug up a few viable-looking old crocus bulbs and returned them to the ground, moving my dig site over a few inches as necessary.  I dug up a few truly horrible-looking non-viable gladiolus bulbs.  Do they ever turn into something nasty when they decay!  But then all of the early things were planted and it came to be time to put late things in the sunny sections of the yard.  

The thing is, the sunny sections of the yard STILL have zinnias, marigolds and one lovely nasturtium clinging to life in single-digit temperatures.  I can't dig them up.  I just can't do it.   I will have to dig into frosty ground when I next have a chance (3 weeks, maybe?) but I can't kill that sweet little nasturtium that I started myself from seed.  I can't do in the marigolds which have so obligingly filled my little patch with a pretty glow.  I cannot possibly harm the gorgeous zinnias which are still producing new buds, for crying out loud!  Even the gazanias, which aren't exactly flowering, but do have a few optimistic-looking flowerheads.  I find I can't touch 'em.  

I'm just an old softie, that's all.

fritillaries

Fritillaries are a new thing for us.  I think they're quite pretty, with their little delicate op-art petals.  We'll see if they fit in with the rest of the flowers.  There are only a dozen in this year's batch.

They have interestingly different bulbs.  They're not as onion-like as the others, nor as very string-papery as the crocuses.  

Busy day

Actual gardening-type activity occurred today!  Not actual gardening, mind you.  But ... there was lots and lots of gardening shopping.

We went out to a big box store and got soil and planks to turn the front yard into something with more nutrients and fewer people walking through it. 

We went to our local seed store and got lots and lots and lots of bulbs.  I mean, lots.  It was a good haul.

Many posts to follow, all about the different types of bulbs.