April 2008

This is only the second season for this Hosta with us. It's 'Stiletto' and it sure is showing some nice vigorous growth. About 10 days ago you could see 5 shoots poking up, now there are in fact 6 of them! And this was just a single division last fall!

While this division does not have as many shoots as the one above, it sure is farther along than that one. It is actually already showing the variegation.

Hosta 'Monashee Blue Cup' was another new addition for us in 2007. It's nice to see it's a reasonably early riser and it looks as if this may grow to at least 5 shoots this year from last year's 3, which may very well lead to a division in June or so.

It's unfortunate that my not-so-trusty Olympus C5050 appears to have given up the ghost once more for the second time in the 5 years I've owned it. Me thinks it's time for something else. Me also knows it's going to be at least 7-10 days or so before I've decided what to do with respect to whether to get it repaired or bite the bullet and get into something a tad more reliable. I must admit that while I like some of the features and the picture quality of the camera, reliability has been less than stellar. After a few months of living with a zoom function that only worked in one direction, now the camera won't even take a picture. It's all indicative of issues with one or more of the switches involved in the respective functions and after having to replace the switch in the memory card slot cover a couple of years ago, I cannot help but feel there's a pattern here. And I'm not encouraged.

However, a dear friend of ours, Joyce, came to the rescue! She was kind enough to lend us her little Canon Digital Elph until we get this sorted. And that's why I can take pictures again, like this one of a cute little Daffodil variety that has two flowers per stem, the name of it has long escaped me. It has also allowed me to document what happened to me Tuesday the 8th on the way home from work, I was the center of a 3 car sandwich. Needless to say we were kinda peed off about it all. It's still driveable though, it only looks bad and you cannot use the trunk any longer with any degree of ease.

When I walked out into the North sideyard on the morning of April 22nd with the canines, I noticed something dark on the lower part of the fence across the Eastern side. It wasn't quite full daylight as yet and I had a hard time trying to figure out what this dark blob was. I wasn't about to prod it, but I figured if nothing else I'd take a picture of it and see if I could figure out what it was. After I'd taken a couple of shots I took it upstairs where Waita was on the computer and asked her to take a look at these pictures. She immediately recognized it for what it was: a bat!

By late afternoon it has moved off the fence onto a block of wood on the side of the garden box and Waita kept insisting it was dead, to which I said 'bull'. If it had indeed died and fallen off the fence it would likely have been face up on its back, not face down. Besides, it was in a different spot an hour later... I'll be surprised if it's still there in the morning, but we'll see... And it was still there. Now the question is one of what to do with the bloody thing. It would not appear to have moved very far afield, so odds are it is not well bat. Since bats of course can carry rabies we want to make sure we keep the darned thing away from the canines for starters.

On another page I showed a couple of pictures taken last year that showed one of my 'Fortunei Hyacinthina' divisions with a couple of shoots exhibiting a distinct white edge variegation. This is that division this year and the part of the crown where the variegation showed is right in line with the yellow plant marker you can just barely see peeking over the lip of the pot on the bottom off to the left. I should know in a few days how much of that variegation will return this year. It's remarkable how on all the divisions I have of this cultivar the first 2 or 3 outer leaves show this very distinct narrow edge variegation when the shoots emerge, but once the leaves begin to unfurl it mostly disappears, all you will have is a white rim to the leaf, which is mostly from the highly glaucous, light coloured backside of the leaves.

I'm tickled pink with how well this Hosta, 'Ice Age Trail', is doing this year. You may recall me mentioning it was one of last year's 'bleach babies' and it would seem that this year we're going from last year's single shoot to possibly as many as 5 shoots this year.

Another one that has done very well is 'Thumbs Up', and it certainly gets that from me this year.