Image of the day - 2012

[cohan]

My only signs of serious spring are indoors, here is Ledebouria galpinii ( a small South African bulb), from seed jan 2010, this is first flowering- so far only on one of several plants in the pot, but they are just emerging from a short winter nap..
Also budding is  L socialis, which has less showy flowers..

[Fermi]

I just couldn't resist this anemone as an image of the day; incredible colour like the chocolate cosmos, how true is it likely to come from seed?

How did this one arise, Tim? Was it from seed you sowed or a bought corm?
Definitely worth collecting the seed and segregating it. I can see "Tim's Chocolate Selection" becoming a popular choice!
Incidentally, the foliage of Anemone coronaria and A. pavonina is just emerging here!
cheers
fermi

[Tim Ingram]

No - I bought it Fermi! (At our local Hardy Plant Society sale this March). By coincidence the speaker at the day was John Massey of Ashwood Nursery fame and he showed pictures of anemones naturalised in grass. They supply seed of anemone strains in the summer but I've never seen a colour like this! They must be potentially very good plants in Australian gardens.

[Lis Allison]

, I don't think its most of North America that is still wintry- seems to be only parts of the West and far East-- just me and Todd  even Lori already has Bulbocodium up!

We've gone from +20C to -8C in two days. The warm days last week brought the leaves out on the Maples and the daffs into fat bud. Now they are getting badly frozen. What a start to the season!

[McDonough]

I know what you mean Lis, same thing here, the wind was gusting so strong this afternoon (29 F) that it was ripping the buds off Magnolia 'Forrest Pink'.  I fully expected this after all that summer in Burmuda weather.

Before the big freeze, Pulmonaria rubra (showing some flowers aging a comely blue), before the freeze  Although, I think the Pulmonarias will take the freezing just fine.

[Lori S.]

We've gone from +20C to -8C in two days.

You folks are getting the sorts of temperature variations that are fairly normal in Calgary!

[cohan]

I used to tell friends in Florida that we had more of a temperature range in one day than they do in a year.... however, we haven't been warm enough (many days up around 10C/50F over the winter, but doesn't matter when the ground is covered in snow and/or frozen) for anything to grow and be in danger yet this spring!
Hope you folks don't have too much damage....
A couple of days ago we had a day or two of -5C/21F or colder daytimes, with -15C/5F nights... and snowing again now.. we'll be back up to 6 to 9C/ 42 to 48F days and lows -1 to -6C/ 30 to 21F in the next few..... still a lot of melting to go....

[Fermi]

No - I bought it Fermi! (At our local Hardy Plant Society sale this March). By coincidence the speaker at the day was John Massey of Ashwood Nursery fame and he showed pictures of anemones naturalised in grass. They supply seed of anemone strains in the summer but I've never seen a colour like this! They must be potentially very good plants in Australian gardens.

We saw lovely patches of Anemones naturalised at Ashwood when we visited prior to the Nottingham Conference last year!

cheers
fermi

[Hoy]

That is something to speak of, Fermi! I don't like at all all this talk about freezing temperatures The weather forecast says we maybe will have down to 0C Monday or Tuesday next week

This week almost all S Norway has had all time high temperatures for March. Today they hit 22-23C the warmest places and that is a warm day even midsummer!
Here at the coast we don't get that warm weather due to the "cold" sea (it is warmer than normal though). Instead we get a lot of morning and evening fog Still the average for this month is +4 above normal and no freezing even at night for 5 weeks now.

[cohan]

and no freezing even at night for 5 weeks now.

Wow, that still amazes me- even though I know intellectually you are so much warmer than us, you are still in the 'north'...lol and we hardly get more than 5 weeks frost free in summer

[Spiegel]

Fermi, I remember the anemones very well - so colorful and graceful.  Do you recall the "herd of sheep" nearby?

[Tim Ingram]

I wouldn't have believed it possible to grow anemones like that without seeing that picture (John Massey showed a very similar one during his talk). There are several plants vying for Image of the Day in our garden at the moment, but I think this Pulsatilla really is the most eyecatching. The flowers don't last long like this, but in combination with that foliage they are a real picture.

[McDonough]

Tim, fabulously fantastic furry fuzz!  Everyone looking at this photo, be sure to enlarge it by clicking on it to see frothy filagree of feathery involucre fineness... lots of "f" adjectives.

[RickR]

I remember (as I imagine everyone does) the first time I grew a pulsatilla for myself.  The "fur" was (and still is) so captivating.  But yours, Tim, is far beyond that!  The shade of lavender of the flowers is quite nice, too. 

[cohan]

This time of year, although we've had bare ground under trees for much of the winter, elsewhere there has been and still is a lot of snow since early November, so its exciting just to see bare ground in places it hasn't been seen in months, and to actually see a garden plants is quite a thrill! My first a are a few Semps and Jovis showing in my new bed in front of the house, and the large pot appended to it.. a few bits were starting to show a week or more ago, then we had more snow, now there are bare patches again, and I've started to thin the snow on the rest ( it gets dumped there when we shovel in front of the house) and move some of the snow from the front/bottom, where I stuck some bulbs in last year..
first a view from a couple of nights ago, then a few views from today.. I'll try to put a couple more in the semp thread..

Semp bed, night snow
Jovibarba allioni
Jovibarba globifera
Jovibarba globifera
Semp just emerging...