Until then, I stop by the house every day or two. I touch the wood doorframes that we've stripped bare of paint, and consider the quality of light entering the tall windows. I imagine paint on the walls, blues and greens and creams. I talk to the neighbors, and rock a little on the front porch swing. Although I've been warned not to garden much, for fear of large machinery coming through, I still putter a bit in the garden, enjoying the few bulbs we planted last fall, and the many surprises the yard had waiting for us. I pick flowers and bring them home, a token, a reminder.
I love these -- there's a huge patch of these little blue flowers in the backyard, and the neighbor says that they last for about a month, and slowly spread. I'd be happy to have them covering the yard -- any idea what they are? Slightly fuzzy close-up follows. It also comes in white, although there are just a few of those.
We planted this one -- fritillaria meleagris (commonly known as snake's head or snake's head fritillary, checkered daffodil, chess flower, frog-cup, guinea-hen flower, leper lily), which I'm told is native to Britain, and a perennial favorite from yesteryear. Deer and rodents don't eat fritillaries, and I admit, I'm just charmed by the idea of checkerboard plants in our garden. Just one has come up so far, and I think I want to move it to under the crabapple tree, but more should be coming.
View from the swing -- crabapple tree, hopefully blooming soon, and a clump of red tulips beyond:
Flowers I picked and brought home: crocuses (we planted), some type of gorgeous double daffodils (a delightful surprise from previous owners, would love to know their name), and hyacinths (also that we planted). One of Kavya's middle names, Jacintha, means hyacinth, so I suspect we'll have quite a few of them around. Also, I like their scent.
Looks like bluebells to me. They slowly creep but always in pretty clumps.
Hmmm…I don’t think it’s the common bluebell, which seems to have several flowers on a stem:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Bluebell
But possibly a variant hybrid?
Or it could also be the Scottish bluebell, or harebell, which is actually a campanula:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campanula_rotundifolia
That’s closer, but I still don’t think it’s quite right. Not quite the right flower shape.
It’s hard to tell from that picture, but they look like scilla to me.
Ooh — I think that might be right. I’m going to try to get a better picture to confirm, but it may well be Siberian scilla:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scilla_siberica
Which is particularly satisfying if so, since they’re part of the hyacinth family — so Kavya can have an entire yard of flowers named for her. If I can confirm that’s actually what they are, then I suspect I’ll be getting quite a few more seeds of it to scatter across the bare patches of yard. (Which is most of the yard. Bare, I mean.)
I think they are scilla. They naturalize themselves really well; you should have no trouble letting them spread themselves. Friends here say that they don’t grow well from planting; better to transplant from established plants. They are beautiful though.