Nature's palette

Despite the whiteness of the lawn when I first got up, I was pleasantly surprised to discover how mild it now is.

I was just taking out the potato peelings for the compost bin & got distracted. I ended up venturing up the garden a bit to look at the last of the yellow daffs to see if they needed deadheading. They didn’t.

As I looked I discovered a whole lot of white ones just starting to appear. These had been planted under the silver birches when the garden was redesigned a couple of years ago. Last year we cleared that area & replanted the bulbs in various parts of the garden. So various were the parts I, & our gardener, had forgotten exactly where we had planted them so the discoveries were quite a surprise.

Some of the bulbs are just in couple of pots to be transferred into the garden after flowering. I had decided on this spot to be an area that need filling with flowers, but it seems it is already filled. It’s just that they are late flowering. I wonder what about the other area I thought needed a few daffs. That’s further up the garden, further than I felt I was up to going this morning.

It has never struck me before this year that the white daffodils & narcissi always seem to be later than the yellow ones. At first we only had white ones so I had nothing to compare them with. Then I planted some yellow ones but we were away when the yellow died & the white began, but this year we are at home. I’ve noticed the same has occurred at the CancerCare place I go for my massages. I’ve long ago accepted that flowers seem to open up later in our garden, after most around us. I suspect that’s a reflection of the fact we live in such a frost pocket.

Re-reading what I’ve just written, an odd thought has just struck me. With wild flowers I always feel they start with a yellow season for spring, dandelions & celandines, before moving onto a white season with ox-eyed daisies & hogweed. Maybe the cultivated flowers follow the order of Nature’s palette too.