Oh, this is such a lovely time of year. These tulips are doing well (if slightly out of focus) but I wish those pinker ones in the background weren't so near the big clump of red ones. How did I do this?
This is a bit of a mixter-maxter of colours too, but I don't really think it matters. Nothing actually clashes.
I have various huge clumps of daffodils which I think every year that I should split up, but never do. Not sure my back's up to it. And anyway, they seem fine.
Daughter 2 gave me this lovely camellia, years ago.
The other day we went, with a group Mr L belongs to, to the herbarium at the Botanic Gardens. We were shown round by a nice young chap who has devoted his life to studying peas and beans. Evidently broad beans are very strange - "the chihuahuas of the bean world" - because they're so overbred that they bear very little resemblance to their original progenitor. I'm not a huge fan of them anyway, though I do eat various other beans as I'm a vegetarian. He showed us some of these folders, with dried plants from various time periods. They have - did he say 3 million? - specimens. They dry new ones much as one did as a child, by squashing them between newspaper in a press. It was very interesting. He said that some amateur collectors in the past would just label their specimens something like "Brazil", whereas nowadays labels are much more specific, eg "Rocky area with sandy soil near the top of the Knock, Crieff".
It's very much rhododendron time at the Botanics - though actually this spans several months.
The park isn't in its full glory yet, but was still pretty, even though it was raining.
Our death cleaning is progressing quite well. We went to the tip and the charity shop the other day with quite a few items, and put things on Facebook Marketplace: two bed rails for children, a micro scooter and Daughter 2's drawing board from when she was an architecture student. The drawing board hasn't gone yet but the rest of the things have - they were free. It'll be a long time till we're exactly minimal (well, never) but I feel we're making progress, and I'm quite enjoying the weekly challenge of finding something we don't need.
What an excellent project! I was doing pretty well getting rid of other people's stuff (and mine) but then hit a plateau and haven't picked it up again. Hyacinths do smell wonderful and as flowers go, I prefer a riot of color and blooms. I don't like sparse! So I love all those bunches of flowers. My tulips are coming on VERY slowly and I'm impatient!
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