Simple Pleasure: Narcissus pseudonarcissus.

Some growing along the long drive way.

The old barn and chicken coop along the drive:

Naturalized daffs along the drive:

And finally, the doubles are starting to open:

I found an open one!

Marvelous!
Who planted the orignals, or are they natural. That is just exceptional. If I were to try to successfully naturalize anything outside of irrigated land here, it would have to be opuntia!
Eye candy and soul food.
K. James

Absolutely GORGEOUS, Neil!!

Your woods look like ours now before they have started to green up.

Nothing showing here as we recd. 5" of snow on Monday and 7" on Thursday of this week. No frost, so things should pop when and if it finally warms up.

Do you live out in the boonies as I do?

Maxine

Thanks! This is definitely the boonies, lol, or rather Appalachia at it's finest, hehe. I'm only 10 minutes from "town", but no one shows up here unless they know where they're going or they're lost. I've often said one hears 'Dualing Banjos' play in one's head while approaching my humble abode. But the only squealing like a pig is me when I find a new bloom! LOL.

Good grief Maxine, I bet the weather is driving you nuts. I've found I enjoy the winter much more now that I live in the woods. Since I don't need blinds I can watch all the bird activity, and the woods covered in snow is beautiful. Do you find winter a bit more tolerable in the boonies?

Kenton, the first couple of pics are looking across the creek from my front yard/garden. There was an old house there that burned (what at that time remained of it) in the '60s, I've been told. I have found remnants of a well, and fence posts over there, as well as some heirloom blooming shrubs, a climbing rose, and all those daffs. I feel a connection to the gardener that lived there. Down the driveway, where the last 5 pics were taken, there is also an old house near the barn and henhouse. I also found several iris and roses and lilac around that house, and that's where many of the daffs stem from. I feel like gardeners of the past are whispering in my ear sometimes; It's comforting.

Wow, it's been a busy week.
Raydio and James, The narcissus I have that burst forth with green and never bloom are the paper whites as someone said.
The king alfred Daffys i have do very well, but the next ones i get are going to be the littler ones - like I had in my garden in upstate NY.

GeminiSage Going to go up and look at those pictures, sure do like the description of your home, would love to live at the end of a road that let me have my privacy.

gemini_sage~

Nice pictures! Looks like the woods around the house here. Even the creek. I live by one, too. It's really nasty, though when it rains alot,. Must flow through a trash dump or yards of messy people: all manner of trashy junk gets deposited high on the banks to remain there until the next gullywasher. I did find a nice aluminum bat last fall, though. lol

Nice that the daffs go on and span time like that, connecting people to people that are no longer present.

toxicodendron~
That's a nice double. If I knew the name, I'd surely tell you. Looks a bit like a yellow version of 'Tahiti', not that there is such a thing.

Kenton, et al~

There was an old "shack" of a house in the woods here and there were daffs planted around it. I guess someone dug them up. I looked this year to see if they were N. pseudo~ but there weren't any.

The show here is all but ended here. Just a few blooms left. I've noticed a lot of fertilized blooms forming pods. Yippee! A little too early to tell how many will set seed.... I have no idea how they've been pollinated. The only thing I've seen on them was a housefly.

Robert.

Night pollenators? Wind is possible to a small extent. Self-pollenation? Gnomes with cotton-tips in hand? Houseflies are suprising but effective (messy) pollenators: I've seen them on my violas.

Oh yes, little night gnomes. I thought that was it! ;-)

Robert.

I'm fortunate that this part of the creek is clean. As you approach my house, let's just say that some of my Appalachian neighbors are'nt as environmentally concientious as I am. How people can live in some of the most beatiful areas this country has to offer and trash it up is beyond me! It took a year to get all the trash cleaned up from this place when I moved here. My dog still unearths things occasionally.

gemini_sage, your pictures look a lot like my place! And your neighbors must be like a lot of the hillbillies who live around me, too. I have said the same thing many times....how can they possibly litter when the world is so beautiful without it? Each time our creek gets up, I go down and fill a trashbag with litter that washes down from the nearby intersection of a busy highway. Otherwise, I just can't enjoy looking at it.

The house side of our creek:

Edited to say I have picked up that broken concrete block, LOL!
Oh, and that is not a sewer drain, it our rain runoff pipe...needs redone.
Pictures sure do tell all, don't they!


This message was edited Mar 19, 2006 8:57 AM

The other side of the creek has pseudonarcissus also (I planted all these, there was nary a flower here when we built our house). There are many more besides what is in this picture. They are a good choice for the woods instead of formal beds. When they die down, it is not as noticeable.
I love them....so little trouble and so welcome each springtime.

Oh, I pulled out all the English Ivy on this side of the creek....another thing I planted, with lots of regrets!!

Toxi~

What a beautiful, beautiful scene! A setting for peaceful reflection. Ahhhhh.......

My planting regrets: Vinca major, Vinca minor, Lysimachia clethroides "Gooseneck Lysimachia".

I love them all but all three just love to fill every bit of available space. I have a variegated V. minor that is a bit more behaved, but still.......

There is also a virulent, nasty, demonic wild Artemesia that will thatch the ground together with it's roots and spread far and wide and every little bit of root (NO exaggeration) left in the ground is just one more new start!
I have to be sooooo careful when transplanting to be sure there are no hitch-hiking roots to avoid creating another problem area. Sheesh.

Robert.

Toxi, just amazing! I love your stone work, it's all enchanting.

Uuugg, chickweed is my nemisis, it's everywhere!

Toxi, what a lovely piece of woods and flowers you have there.

Toxi, that has to be the ideal place te have a cup of tea.


Rip van Winkle has boldly opened today:

Nice thread. I much prefer the species narcissi than most of the cultivated forms, there is just something so simple about their form. Mine are away off blooming. I have several miniature forms. Hope to share some soon! You are so lucky to have these vast areas of naturalised plants!

Species Narcissi rule!

Pictures are always appreciated.

I agree about chickweed. *&^%^ stuff! On balance though, it can help retain moisture in the soil, a living mulch, if you will and grows thick and lush with absolutely no care. But the negatives far outweigh any positive "vitues". :-((((

Robert.

Thank you all for your kind comments about my property. We are in the slow process of expanding our deck and hope to enclose it with a screenhouse/sunroom and hot tub so we can enjoy the view during summer without mosquitoes! We have about 3.5 acres here, with the creek running through the middle lengthwise. It used to be choked with poison ivy (Toxicodendron, my DG name, ha) but I eventually got it killed off with herbicides in a lot of places. I still have a 2/3 acre field where it is going crazy. I am horribly allergic to it.

Yes, I also planted vinca minor and it is blooming in the first picture I posted. It is mixed in with all the English Ivy and it looks like the ivy is blooming at first glance.

Chickweed, so pretty and lush when it appears! So is the henbit! If they would only stay that way. One of the most difficult plants I have ever tried to remove is yucca. Every smidgeon of root eventually sprouts.....for years! I tried the gooseneck lisimachia, too. Got rid of that after the first season or two, as soon as I saw what a thug it is.

Raydio, what is the Artemesia weed you have? If you have a picture, please post it so I can be on guard against it!

Here is another old heirloom daffodil I don't know the name of. I got several types from an old farmstead in 1977, and of course, none of them were labeled. Do any of you recognize it? I have been to the Old House Gardens site (which is wonderful) but I did not see it there.

JamesCo, your Van Winkle is delightful. If I had some, they have disappeared. Do you have trouble with the heavy flower heads drooping? We get a lot of rain here in the spring and the doubles are often face down and can't get back up.
My daughter moved to Colorado last summer and has just purchased a ranch Northeast of Lake George. The elevation is over 9000 feet so she is getting plenty of snow. We are going out there to see her soon and I am taking some plants to her...but her ground is frozen solid! Can you recommend anything for zone 4?
It is odd that you are in such a warm zone....aren't you close to Grand Junction?
Oops, sorry...I am changing the subject. Let me just ask this: do daffodils do well in Colorado?

That is one of the... Softest?... looking doubles. Very nice. I hope you can ID it.
Rip van Winkle definately droops. I have an abundance of willow twigs from the neighbor, so I use s few to prop droopy flowers. I don't have the same problem with other doubles, but I don't enjoy other doubles as much.

Narcissus do much better here than tulips, I will tell you that. We just don't have enough Nitrogen in most soils. Everything else (mineral wise) is pretty rich here. Clifton is a suburb, if you will, of Grand Junction. "On the South side of the Railroad Tracks" if you know what I mean. There is a hellish crime-infested single street in Clifton that earns us such a great reputation. I could tell you all about our funny little peach-growing microclimate on the East end of this fair valley (that opens into Utah). (We are high desert, with aout 8" annual precip.) I think I'm the first here to grow Bananas.

Lake George. Talk about classical Colorado. Way up in the mountains. She'll have a very short growing season but a spectacular autumn. She'll be able to grow all sorts of conifers, trees from the same biome in other parts of the world. Pansies and other cool-season annuals do very well in high elevations. Aspen for sure, Aquelegias. If a person wants variety, the best bet is a bit of a rock garden with Gentians, etc. Have a look here:
http://www.bettyfordalpinegardens.org/

K. James

Here is the Artemesia. The grayshness of the new, felty, aromatic foliage is more so "in person" . The reverse is very silvery-gray. I think it is common wormwood or mugwort (A. vulgaris, ssp "From Hades" ;-)). It is a perennial and makes seed (AFAIK, it does. It flowers (chaffy nothings)but I haven't actually checked to see if it produces viable seed. I don't want to know!

It spreads by underground runners which will strike on asphalt from the merest slip of a piece. Do not think that pulling it up by the throat will rid you of it. And do not dare to til it under to get rid of it. LOL

It eventually reaches an average height of 2-2.5 feet per season and the tops die down each year but are replaced with short new growths in the winter. I'll post other picture as it goes through its season so you can see what it looks like.

It grow everywhere though somehow conditions keep it from going crazy like kudzu, but it nevertheless wreaks havoc in cultivated areas with good light. It came into our yard on some iris I got from my grandmother and then my father got some fill dirt from an area that was rife with it. Oy!

The good news is that Round-up will send it to its great reward. But you have to keep check on it because every little bit you missed is it's cloven hoof in the door. It is a devil, no doubt about it.

I do grow some other Artemesias (ludcoviciana and others) but this is is not pretty, just prolific. It would be a great plant to control erosion, though. It binds the soil together in a 2" thick solid mass of roots and rhizomes and it laughs drought of *any* duration! But to *willingly* introduce this plant to ANY are for ANY reason must be WELL thought out!!! You have been warned.

Happy Gardening!

Robert.

PS: You may notice the woodland phlox (P. divaricata) in the lower right and left of the pic. If little gems like this weren't all bound up with Artemsia devilsspawn, I would have long ago rid myself of this pest.

This message was edited Mar 19, 2006 5:15 PM

Artemesia devilsspawn, I love that! ssp 'from Hades' !!!
I used to have something I called wormwood, and it was a silvery artemesia, but it died off. I don't recall it being as dissected as yours. Perhaps your climate or soils are more conducive to it's success than mine was.
And yes, the phlox divaricata is another little native gem, isn't it? It seeds freely here, but I never consider it a weed.

JamesCO, thanks for the alpine link...I will go there directly and check out the possibilities. One of her neighbors has a lilac, so I have potted an offshoot of mine, also a hardy oriental poppy, some lychnis coronaria, larkspur, miscanthus, daylily 'Stella d'Oro', Christmas fern, hosta, hellebore, Jacob's Ladder, woodland phlox, and maybe a few others...just extras I had here. I bet Gentian would be lovely....I sure don't have any of that! I have seen it blooming out there in CO though, it makes me whip the camera out really fast.

Here is a current bouquet of a few types of Daffodils that are in bloom here (pretending to get back on subject):

The wild Artemesia in question nothing like true wormwood, A. absinthium, which I really like and makes a nice silvery shrublet. This one doesn't get or stay as silvery as the other. Just the newest growth and backs of leaves. Mostly it's gray-green and weedy-looking.

A. vulgaris isn't native to the US. It has just naturalized here. Maybe that's why it isn't prevalent in your area. I see it mostly in part sun to shady areas when I'm rambling around and maybe it's localized where I'm looking....

There's variegated selection, "Limelight" that is quite nice, and yes I bought some (can you believe that!?) but I keep it in a 20" pot. I am tempted to try it in the ground, just to see if it spreads the same, but with my Round-up at the ready......

https://www.gardencrossings.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/plants.main/cfid/4779997/cftoken/52617768/index.htm
Scroll down.

Your daff bouquet is pretty. Are they from your yard? And the one you are trying to identify is just charming. Hope you find out its name. I'll keep an eye out too. None of my books have it in them.

Robert.
Edited to add link.

This message was edited Mar 19, 2006 6:52 PM

Yes, the bouquet is from my yard. There are 8 varieties in the bouquet, but I have about 23 or so varieties here. Fortunately, they don't bloom all at once!

I am vexed about the lack of an ID on some of my old daffs. Surely there are lots of folks out there who have these! The first one I pictured that looks like 'Tahiti' is about 2inches across and 1 and 1/4 inches deep. The second one only has a double cup, which is rather flat, only 1/2 inch deep. I have several others not ID'd yet, but I will keep asking and looking! Thanks for checking your books.

I have had 'Thalia' for years (gave away hundreds last fall) and now I have some that have a double cup. I guess maybe all these are hybridizing on their own.
Double cup Thalia:

Wow that's a nice double Thalia!

And, no kidding, if it's a hybrid that just sprang up there in your yard, you really have something. I'd make sure nothing happens to that one!

Robert.

Oh, the 'Oriental Limelight' is pretty....but I do see they say it is aggressive! Better keep it in that pot.

Actually, I have them in two separate locations, amongst the singles....I sent the photo to someone who forwarded it to Old House, but I never heard anything in return. For now, I have about 6 bulbs, so I marked them and will allow them to multiply whilst I search for a name. If they multiply as fast as the singles, I will be overrun before long!
They have a slightly creamy center, as compared to the singles which have pure white trumpets, so that makes me think that some type of hybridization with a light yellow double may have occurred. Wouldn't it be exciting if I had a unique new plant?

Say, JamesCo, may I call you Kenton? You may call me Susan or Toxi if you prefer....
I checked out the weblink to the Betty Ford Alpine Gardens....I will definitely be going there first chance I get (in summer, of course, not this trip next week). Gee, I would like to work there!
Do you work in horticultural pursuits, or is it just a hobby you enjoy?

I have a degree in Horticulture (late bloomer), but do absolutely nothing with it since we live in an extremely rural and poor county. My desire is to work in public gardening, as I have done in a couple of internships. I really enjoy the quality and quantity of plants in a big garden, and truly love sharing my knowledge and efforts with the public.

Toxi, I think that may be a sport. There is a named selection that is a sport of Thalia with a double cup. I believe I've found an occasional double among mine, or it may have been that my doubles started reverting back to singles, it's been too long to tell now.

Aren't the wierdos exciting? There is nothing better than finding a new beast in one's own garden. Isn't the double 'Thalia' sport (or at least one of them) named?

(Neal, I am sending your box Tuesday morning)

Call me anything you like, Susan. My given name (Kenton) confuses folks (spoken, not written: I get "Kenny, Kenneth," and worst of all "Clinton" in real life...). Ironically, I ought to go by James out there and Kenton in here, eh?
I'm a college student (Studio Art BFA; no, I'm not that "artsy") who crams in professional and serious hobby gardening on the side. Tuesday will be the first day I charge $20/hour. ( All I can think of is more bulbs/vines next fall)
I want you to know I have noted your unique screen name while I enjoyed your numerous contributions to PlantFiles, thanks.
Are you a Master Gardener, Susan?

I still have yet to find my notes that tell me which spot is which in a comparison trial of N. bulbocodium conspicuus versus N. bulbocodium 'Golden Bells.' But right now, I can tell you that one has more leaves and the other has a bud.
(Kenton)

Whether the Thalia is a sport or hybrid or whatever, I am just happy to have it because it is very pretty. That is enough for me!

Kenton, I am not a Master Gardener. The closest program for that is 2 hours away (many trips back and forth) and the material is all redundant to my professional training anyway. But it is a great program for those who are in close proximity to the training. Are you one?
Oh, and congratulations on your $20 an hour job!

I'm going to the classes. It is about done, and filled int the gaps and the science behind things I knew.

I like your "I like it because it's pretty" ethic, I've recently gotten mixed up into a very need-to-be-identified/named standard recently.

I go through that phase intermittently. Too bad I did not record all the names of the plants I bought when I got them. Later, I am scrounging around trying to locate a tag or a seed order, or such. I can't rely on my memory!
Do you have a public garden out there where you can put in your service hours for the Master Gardener program?

I hear you Susan. I used to know all the cultivar names and now I have to go looking for tags, hoping I still have one. Then I go through catalogues, then books and online.
Sheesh.

Robert.

Thanks goodness I liked to collect the tags and such- I thought they were nice, but I don't use tags in the garden. Now I keep religious records of where, when what, how, why and all in my garden. It has come in awfully handy.
Susan, the extension is building an arboretum and they are always in need of folks to attach to telephones.
K. James

Looks like we are gonna get a HARD FREEZE here tonight. It won't hurt the pseudonarcissus much, though...they are pretty much finished!
I picked another big bouquet of assorted blooms...the whole kitchen smells wonderful. When we get a big freeze, I wish I could pick them all and give them away before they are ruined. Or have a big free-for-all picking party.
Alas, I was too busy today, and did not even get to cover a lot of the tender shoots that are emerging. :(