Bulbs: Spring bulb pics and talk: Part V, 1 by wallaby1

wallaby1 wrote:
Yegads, there's so much I'll just say Brilliant!

I have had some freesias off and on in a greenhouse, and I think it was only one colour that I could detect a scent. Being outside, and with a strongly scented plant nearby will confuse. Some people have different scent detectors, my neighbour couldn't smell a strong scent of a rose where I could. He can smell the freesia when I can't.

There is a strap shaped leaf near the flower stem of the freesia. Steve were you looking at those geranium leaves? I don't see that it can be any other flower, it even leans like a freesia.

Yes Kenton you are getting annoying! Dracunculus annoying!

I saved a bumblebee today, I took some pics of it a few days ago, it was just bumbling in and out of crocus for ages. When enlarged I saw lots of buggy things around its head, I was so distressed I wiped them all. I saw it for a couple of days still bumbling around, not being able to fly. Today I saw it again in the remains of crocus, and hundreds of mites were crawling around its body. They were everywhere, disappearing into its long hair, around its 'chest', all around its head, under its 'jaws', around its back under its wings. I couldn't see it suffer, so I devised a way of holding it down with a curled up soft leaf, like a cigar shape, and had a thin rigid stick to poke at the mites.

Can you all just picture me, on my elbows and knees on the lawn for 1.5 hours, rolling a bumble bee around! Every time I got some to 'come out' I gave a good blow, flipped the BB away and continued. Can you imagine tipping it on it's head and lifting its wings, scraping mites from its waist and back? Poking them from around its head, its legs, under its pincers tipping its head back to dig them out?

At the end of all this it let me stroke it, it had stopped lifting its legs out in defense, it exercised its wings and cleaned its feelers. I took it and put it on an anemone blanda, later moved it to another lot on the bank so it wasn't in the wind. Later in the day I saw it on Narcissus jetfire, looked across to see if it had gone from the anemone, when I looked back it was gone. It could fly! I feel so emotional!

Kb that is such a gorgeous blue, now I'll have to get some of those too! I think some bulbs go dormant for a while and come back when conditions suit them.

Hers my little friend