Post your spring pictures here

[BrassMan]

Century plant progress report: it's still 30 feet tall, but fully budded and soon to bloom; pretty majestic on day 77.

[MAGreen]

How cool is that? I am really amazed by this thing. I have heard of them and even looked them up on google and read a little about them. I can almost imagine it coming to life...although I can't decide if it would be a wise and gentle thing or a ravaging beast waking to devour everything around it. Thanks for sharing it with us Al!

[BrassMan]

How cool is that? I am really amazed by this thing. I have heard of them and even looked them up on google and read a little about them. I can almost imagine it coming to life...although I can't decide if it would be a wise and gentle thing or a ravaging beast waking to devour everything around it. Thanks for sharing it with us Al!

Everyone likes to share their troubles. At least this trouble is fairly scenic and spectacular.

I'm going to give you a little preview of those troubles. You see all those little fingers on the bloom, above? I reckon there are about a hundred on that one finger. The whole plant must have at least a thousand or more. Every one of those d*mn things is a potential century plant. They drop off, or the wind blows them off, and they try to take root: on the roof, on the back deck, in the garden, and here, like this one from three years ago, between a brick walkway and a wall. I cleared all I could find, back then, but I missed this one. If I don't dig it up, it'll push the bricks and possibly the wall aside and become as big as a d*mn house.

And we now have THREE century plants blooming!

[BrassMan]

OK; here we go. Day 81 and it's not quite in full bloom, but it's well started. Remember, each of these little things is a potential century plant.

   

[MAGreen]

That is just sooo cool. What kind of camera do you have, AL? The zoom keeps really great clarity.

[BrassMan]

That is just sooo cool. What kind of camera do you have, AL? The zoom keeps really great clarity.

It's a Canon SX-20. BlueEyedMum made me get it. Talk about an enabler!

[NavyGirl Leigh]

Hi Al!   Miss chatting with you!

I have to say that TREE., er uh... plant er huh., flower is looking mighty large and cool !

[BrassMan]

Bad news, I'm afraid, bad news for followers of the giant, slow-motion flower in bloom. It had been leaning lately, and we do have brisk winds off the coast, and yesterday this was the scene. I've never seen this happen before.

The good news, such as it is, is that we still have two similar plants in good condition. One is leaning. This coming week I shall try to find a way to stake it, short of hiring a crane. The other two are perhaps ten days younger than this unfortunate one. (Still, we have hopes of drying it and making a nice Christmas tree.)




Hi, NavyGirl! Send me a PM!

[MAGreen]

Oh my! Well, it was fun while it lasted, and look at this way, now it can't spread all those seeds and take over the world...

[telracs]

Oh my! Well, it was fun while it lasted, and look at this way, now it can't spread all those seeds and take over the world...

That's what I was thinking.  One less Triffid to destroy us all!

[BrassMan]

That's what I was thinking.  One less Triffid to destroy us all!

That was a funny thing about triffids, I seem to remember: they were prolific and hard to kill. Regarding our crashed century plant, by our house, here's a look east from it and a look west. Uh-oh! Two more!

East:



West:

[BrassMan]

My wife really, really wants a dried Christmas tree. Soooo...this is the latest development:



It may last, or it may not. Right now we're watching to see if Hurricane Alex comes this way. If it does, all bets are off.

[MAGreen]

Oh wow! I hope for your wife's sake that it survives for her.

[BrassMan]

We're well out of spring, alas, but these dayflowers are (1) rare, and (2) among my favorite wildflowers, being late spring and summer flowers, and usually trying to bloom after folks have lost patience with dried up flowers and started mowing everything in sight. I leave a few patches of these, just to be sure they endure. They help with that: they fold up during the heat of the day and open up again the next morning. They'll last through August if they don't get cut down.

They're a lovely, sky blue, but small. Here's a sampling in increasing closeup:

[Susan in VA]

Those blue ones are pretty!  What's the status of your pet Triffid?

[BrassMan]

Those blue ones are pretty!  What's the status of your pet Triffid?

The staked one is still staked, despite two tropical depressions. The fallen one, on the sawhorses, continues to try out, dropping blooms by the hundreds. The third one is still leaning. Time moves on.

Here's a bromeliad, another slow-blooming flower, not nearly as triffid-like but still prickly.

[telracs]

Pretty blue!