Spring Bulbs Pictures & Discussion: Part IV

That's why I don't bring nice things to work. I remember we once had an open house one Sunday afternoon for employee families and a vase with dried flowers was stolen off my desk. Last summer, someone took my umbrella that was in a closed, but unlocked desk drawer. I even had someone steal my lunch out of the fridge. It's hard to believe that someone you work with and see everyday could be so low. I now keep my desk drawers locked even when I'm in my office and I don't keep anything on top of my desk that I would be sad to lose. These days I just settle for a pleasant garden scene on my desktop wallpaper. Should you bring in another pot? That's up to you, but make sure it's a cheap plastic one. Nice neighborhood? You'd be surprised how many rats actually live in nice neighborhoods.

wow, beaker...someone stole your lunch? that is so low.

it was a plastic terracotta pot. and my office is the end unit on the second floor. someone went up the stairs to do a crummy deed. the guys (i'm the only gal in the team) and i are all looking forward to the daffs to bloom, too.

i was thinking of a rose garden...(sigh). no more.

Mg what a cheek they have, I agree a plastic pot might not be so tempting, at least if it's taken it's not so much lost. I would take the daffodils home and keep them there, a thief won't worry about doing it again, they're probably watching for another one to make a pair!

Tell you what, put a plastic pot with plastic flowers in and stick needles into them! That will give a shock if they decide to pull them up, unless they just tip them out. Was this done in darkness? Knock some sharp nails from the inside so they protrude around the sides, then screw the pot to the terrace, if that is concrete it can be done, or cement it to the ground. Can you see the shock when they try to pull up the pot and get ripped?

Do you have security cameras? I sound like I've done this before don't I! No, just think revenge is sweet!

beaker fancy having your lunch stolen! Are these silly school children? Do you have any idea who the culprit is? Gee we need DG to keep our sanity!

Is it too late to plant bulbs in zone 8b? I have boxes of caladiums, hostas and canna lilies that I bought from Sam's Club (Costco).

Well Wallaby I don't have much new out - yet! So, I'm enjoying everyone else's pictures. But I do have lots of Dutch Iris leaves - thoough they usually bloom in April. They look great with my Sir Winston Churchill narcissus that bloom about the same time - the leaves are up on those too. I do have some Tahiti narcissus that are now starting to bloom, and more summer snowflakes.

And, I have more several more peonies coming up - and virtually all of them with flowerbuds - from last year. I say this because several were newly planted in fall of 2004 and I wasn't sure how well they'd come back with the warm winter we've had - but they are all appearing to!!

My rosebushes will be in bloom next month too - they photograph well too! And lilies!

Ughhh my cannas are coming back - I thought I'd got them all but noooo!

benjamin if you have all these bulbs you'd better get them in, I'm holding off here because it's darned cold, but I think you are having warm weather in TX. They will only suffer if they are not put in and want to grow. Have fun!

Steve, oh roses, peonies, ;lilies, next month??? Well you know what we're having here, all I will say is that even the BBC weatherman said the daffodils are retreating back into the ground!

What's wrong with cannas? What sorts are they? I wish mine would come back that easily, I have to treat them with kid gloves. Mind you I have a few that regularly regrow from keeping in the greenhouse over winter.

Well Wallaby I watch the BBC news on TV in the morning pretty often and flip back and forth between it and our networks - though I always seem to miss the part about the weather!

Ugh wallaby they are the most invasive plants here. I had to dig them out of my garden last year after they became these 9 ft tall monstrosities and one clump was probably 7 or 8 ft wide, too - and the root system underground looked like an electrical grid. I thought I got them all but I found at least a dozen sets of leaves coming up in a couple of places. They multiply like rabbits and you can't kill them (if they were better behaved I might like them).

Strange that isn't it? i often have every intention of watching it, and do start to watch it, but by the end I'm saying 'what was that?' 'did you see that?' he didn't either! We must be in weather denial!

Steve that sounds like a tropical dream! I suppose you need a special spot for them!

Yeah - the compost heap! LOL No seriously - I have a hard time killing plants - and don't like to do it - and really avoid doing it. They might be OK in an area that was open yet contained - but my yard is too small for that and they just overpower everything else. I am not sure what varieties they are - had a neighbor give them to me and they are really tall and have orange flowers.

i'm waiting for a few cannas, steve.

benjamin, just go and plant them! i still have some daffs growing sans soil...

oh, janet...the thought of bare cement (terrace). how about SUPER GLUE the pot to the cement?

i would like to think that people who garden wouldn't do such thing.

tulips are about to bloom!

Haven't a clue, Wallaby. There's about 130 people on my floor with a pretty even mix of men and women. Some of the guys are pretty young though, so I suspect the missing lunch can be attributed to one of them. I have a fairly good reputation as a cook and often bring treats. Periodically, we have pot lucks and our annual chili cookoff is next week.

I try to take the attitude that someone needed that lunch more than me, but I sure would like to know who it is that goes through my office periodically. I did talk to our protection people (I have a lot of buddies in that group) and they said they could put a camera up, but the incidents are so far apart, I decided it would be a waste of resources. Sooner or later, the culprit will be caught, if not by me, by someone else. Life has a way of dealing with nogoodniks.

Moonglow, if it was only a plastic pot to begin with, I wonder if it isn't someone who resents you being there. Those sorts of things also happen in the workplace. Just keep your eyes open and don't be too trusting of people you don't know very well.

I was just thinking. I wonder if you could mix dye in something like vasoline and place it on your pot in an inconspicuous spot. If the pot is taken again, you'd think some of the dye would come off on the person's hands. If nothing else, it may put an end to pot thievery.

I'm so sorry to hear about the theivery at work Annapet! We had a problem with the money being stolen from
a coffee club. One of the engineers rigged a motion sensing camera and we found out it was one of the cleaning
staff. It made everyone feel a lot better that it wasn't one of the "team".

Anyway ... I forgot to post my iris reticulata. The ones with more sun are up and the ones in less sun are just
starting. (And it got COLD here ... below 40F now at 8pm vs 68F same time yesterday).

Annapet, my immediate guess would also be office cleaning or janitorial staff. Unless it's bolted to the ground, I would anticipate it happening again and again, nice or cheap pot. Maybe you can use a large coffee can, paint it pretty and leave it at that. I don't think anybody will steal a can, even if painted pretty. This turns my stomach and I regret it happened to you. Last year, my friend who lives in a "nice" subdivision had somebody come into her porch to steal 2 hanging baskets.

beaker, your lunch? that is so terrible!

It's not always the cleaning crew, although I've heard of that happening where I work too. My lunch and umbrella went missing during the day when the cleaning crew are not on. When someone has been going through my office, it's usually also during the day. Whenever we've had a problem with someone on the cleaning crew stealing, it's usually things like money or things that could be sold for money; radios, cds, tapes, etc.

A plastic flower pot seems petty to me, so I can't help but think the reason for the theft was also petty.

my statement about cleaning/janitorial crew was a gross generalization and unfair to the majority who do this for a living and do it honorably. Unfortunately, we all have heard/lived a story involving the bad apples and those reach magnitudes that totally overshadow the good work done by the majority, be it a cleaning crew, corporate executive, car salesman, lawyer, etc. etc. etc.

I wasn't criticizing your comment, Voss., so please don't take it as such. But as long as we are speculating, I don't understand why the bulbs weren't taken along with the pot. Maybe it wasn't theft at all. Perhaps the pot became damaged somehow and the person causing that damage decided it best to get rid of the "evidence" rather than be accused of carelessness.

oh no, I didn't think you were criticizing at all. I just thought about what I said and decided it wasn't fair or nice. Also, I thought about my friend that has a 3 person cleaning crew who work like dogs. If she read this statement, she would be very hurt.

your speculation about why they didn't take plants is a good one.

my guess is: just a common vandal. our office is end unit on the second floor. someone deliberately went up the stairs to do the deed.

to cheer me up, i might get the new canon eos 30D.

here's the sepia version of the same daff.

What a dog, I say. What a dog to take a flowerpot.

Has anyone read Steinebeck's "the Crysanthemum?" The similarities...

I catch little kids snatching my flowers on thier way to school . I tell them that I would love to give them some flowers, better ones from the back eve, but they just need to ask. What concerns me is how (sometimes) casually they let it slide and answer me indifferently. I'm planting a nice border of lovely poisonous plants there now, in proper Wallaby style. The tulips have been left alone for a year now, nicely.
Weather is just beginnning to be sunny again, -2C or so, I hope the flowers pick back up and get growing again. (The Dracunculus is still fine with freezing at night. It is a conundrum for evolutionists that a mediterannean plant be so hardy, eh?)
K. James

k. james, right on, in proper wallaby style i will follow. it's going to be a BRUGMANSIA TERRACE.

I almost forgot about this, but a few years ago in Spring with my yellow Iris at blooming peak, I got up one morning to find them all gone. ALL. I've always attributed that little mishap to a midnight tipsy thief leaving the VFW. Last summer, I lost some African Marigolds because someone urinated on them through the fence. Boy was I mad, but I guess that's the hazards of living across the alley from a bar.

Catching up here.... wow, what a busy thread! Sorry to hear about the missing pot... sheesh.

Kenton, that bush above the Iris reticulata is an azalea... not sure which one without rooting around in my papers, but it's pretty ordinary. Oh! Maybe you were looking at the grey foliage of the lavender hedge... L. grosso, 'Fat Spike'... one of my garden favorites!

'Fat Spike' is fantastic ~ no wonder it's a favorite! The dried flower stems keep their scent for the longest time.

OK, now I can't resist posting a photo of the lavender hedge in bloom last year.

I know it's an off topic photo since I can't see a single blooming bulb in it! But this front landscape bed does have a lot of bulbs in it... several colors of grape hyacinth (you can see the foliage along the front border behind the rocks), tiger lilies (foliage meandering up the center of the bed, the iris reticulata are around an azalea at the top corner, tall bearded iris (I know these are rhizomes not really bulbs) just behind the grape hyacinths, I think there are some alliums in there somewhere, 'Geranium' daffs in clumps around the pear tree, some other daffs planted along behind the lavender, fall saffron crocus and spring species tulips along the front walk (in front of the dianthus you see that's gone to seed in the photo), red tulips at the bottom of the bed just below the edge of the photo, other tulips in the opposite top corner....

I guess the lavender blooms fill a "gap" between blooming bulb times!

Mg go for it! Love the sepia efect, I have that on AOL Picture Studio, will have to experiment.

Not sure about the poisonous plants though Kenton, you must have scared those little darlings off! When I had my Dracunculus in a pot outside they survived a lot of frost with only minimal damage to the foliage, but the bulbs didn't like it, pots can get frozen and too wet. I like the way you have yours with stones around it, that must give some protection.

beaker I like your line of reasoning, do you think Mg should start a 'Who dunnit' thread?

vossner you're doing OK, Dave's thread on banning must be having an effect!

Well done!

Sigh…. nothing has sprout here yet.
Thanks to all for sharing the photos, spring must come here
sometime I suppose LOL

Well, I think there's been enough speculation for now, but it might be a great thread next winter when we're all bored out of our minds. Sometime between the planting of fall bulbs and the buying of summer ones. I wonder if that murder mystery game can be played on-line? hum....

Love your pic, Critter! Nothing wrong with seeing the bulb garden through the seasons. ;)

LOL Voss and wallaby ~ I've followed that thread too. I clean for a living and I'm one of those that works like a dog and am honest as the day is long. But unfortunately, this line of work doesn't always attract the....shall we say... "cream of the crop"? We require background checks and you'd be appalled (I am!) at the number of people that come seeking employment that have criminal backgrounds (usually for theft!). And they think we would allow them in someone's home?? It's soooo hard to find and keep good employees. Sigh.....

Edited for spelling ~

This message was edited Mar 15, 2006 2:30 PM

Here is the crocus lawn at my friend's showing more C. vernus. She realized that they were just impossible to walk through (thus she skirts the outside precariously!) so I am helping...

...to mark a path and move out the crocus planted there, then set some spaced-out and sunken flag-stones to guide a person to walk on to aviod damaging the lawn/bulbs:

Perfect curve! They are so hard to do, you have mimicked the curve of the lawn perfectly!

It' s a bit like "Where's Waldo" with the small bubs trying to escape the mighty Hedera...

Oh, yes I am the master, Wallaby. Actually, the simple trick is to look at it from a long perspective like that. It doesn't warrant any accolade. What is hard is to get the stones' edges to still portray that, but this is neither the time nor the place...

My first crocus from the 50+ that I planted last fall in the grass... The other bulbs coming up are a mystery to me. I mean, I did plant those last fall as well, but they were things I found when I dug up the beds to plant other things. They might be narcissus...not sure...

Hey, Vossner! If you're watching this thread.... please respond to my Dmail regarding the SEB Trade. Thanks!

No new pics today... the crocci out back are looking mighty battered from the wind we've had lately. But some of the daffs are budding! :-)