Flowers, anyone? Rhododendrons? (That means rose-colored trees.) Well, it has completely clouded over. But it's nice!!! It's making the flowers look really pretty, because it's still fairly bright.
I wish I had a digital camera to post pictures. Next year I will buy sed camera and waste endless hours, like now but worse, posting windows into a garden. It's the Sultan's Garden, The Alhambra, the Red Fort, Babylon, Eden. Only those are losers. Heh heh. Most of those bozos did not have rhodies nor the astounding hybrids that have come into existence, have made their first aesthetic imprint on human eyes and senses, in this century. The Real Flowering. They must eat their hearts out and hope for reincarnation. Now don't you feel superior already? Well. You are.
Just to make myself feel good, lavish like, and special and important and beloved by nature, I would like to list some of the "bushes" blooming today. Okay? Picture these as large bushes with dense, exotically colored flowers. Of fine, delicate form. They chime in color and smell divine.
Okay:
~ Exotic (Cows holy! Run!!) (King George x Ostbo Y-3)
~ A World Famous Yellow one I forget, but it's a world famous yellow. What is the name of that. It's a little bit "leggy", stem-y, but the flower is so clear people grow it anyway. For decades it was considered the best. Uhm shoot, I can't think of it, but I did think of what might be the oddest named rhody: "Halfdan Lem." Halfdan Lem. I thought that was a weird name for a plant, and then I met Halfdan Lem, or his kid, or something. What the heck is with that. Halfdan? Lem? How many Halfdan's do you know? What's his brother's name? Otherhalfdan Lem? Quarterdan?
~ Mary Mayo (also Loderi King George x Ostbo Y-3)
~ Carolyn Grace
~ R yakushimanum x smirnowii (this form superior, from the first in existence by Hall) (that is, when these bloomed, they were the first blooming on the planet, besides the mother plant)(and worth the wait) (cherry colored bud, clear pink to white truss)
~ R concinnum "Wine"
~ Allistone Johnstone (peach and pink with apricot)(cinnabarinum group; aromatic foliage)
~ Luscombei (thomsonii x Loderi?)
~ R davidsonianum
~ Rose Marie Chip
~ R augustinii "Marine" (ooh. fluorescent marine and purple. neon.)
~ Blue Lake
~ Sylphides (deciduous azalea 6 feet tall - perfumed)
~ Loder's White
~ Blue Peter
~ Senorita (hoowhee)(frilly edge, red violet, blue violet, cream) (alsoLoderi King George x Ostbo Y-3)
~ R bureavii (rare)
~ Dopey
~ R yakushimanum "Mist Maiden"
~ R yakushimanum
~ R yakushimanum x fortunei
~ R fortunei (U of Wash form)
~ R yunnanense
~ Fred Hamilton (hot) (nothing personal, Fred)
~ Favorite
~ Anna Rose Whitney (fluorescent rose pink)
I think that's most of them. Blooming now, right out the windows.
It's like A Profusion. Like when coral blooms, or spawns, or whatever it does. Wedding cakes come to mind. Astral ceremonies. Bejeweled living forms. Mental expressions. Sacred festivities.
Many of these grow to tree size. Slowly; but hey, they have to start sometime. I understand some of the Himalayan bright red R. arboreum in England are now one hundred feet tall. The whole tree blooms translucent cherry red. Like cubic rhodochrosite. They created "the biggest sensation of the century" when the first one bloomed at Kew Gardens in 17 something. People rode in carriages from all over England to see.
Suckers.
We also have the largest and most beautiful rhododendron in the inner planets: a gigantic Loderi "Venus", planted in 1945 and now about 16 feet tall by twenty wide. The shell pink and white florets of each truss are about four inches across ~ so the whole truss is a foot wide and tall. They bloom asshole to elbow, as we say in the elegant plant business. The fragrance is absolutely heady. Keel over divine. Please inhale. Looking at the bloom tops, the icing, from the second floor is one of the most unusual and exotic lanscapes you will ever see in life. Angels or gods live in there. If they don't, I will.
It's like when you were a kid and you wished you could get small and tiny and spend the day in a flower. Completely surrounded, and by wonder.
The cross (hybridization) of Ostbo Y-3 with Loderi King George was one of the most successful in the genus. It's called The Bovee Cross, after a gentleman in Portland, whose nursery still has the originals, now very large. You have to sew all the crossed seed, and then raise 100 or so plants til they bloom, yada yada yada oh jeez deathly boring til they Bloom, which can be many years. Then you chuck most of them in the chipper. Ow. Usually you're lucky if you get an interesting or horticulturally valuable plant (e.g. fantastic bloom with added pest resistance or hardiness), but this particular cross produced five of the finest flowers in the world. Without a doubt. We're actually talking finest flowers in the world. Somewhere, sometime, bodies get to do that. There's only a few real contenders. Check em out. Roma Sun, Gertrude Bovee, Mary Mayo, Senorita, Exotic. Colors within the bloom range from ivory with pomegranate, to plum-watermelon-cantaloupe. They teem like celestial colors might. "Suitable."
He, George Bovee, got some pesticide on his arm and croaked. Flopped around and bit it.
Heh heh.
These plants are among the most elegant in the world. Maybe the most elegant large plants; large blooming plants. I know it's not a race, but hey, there's The Obvious. The cream of balance, and color. That will knock your wonder loose. Peel your pants. Sunburn.
Gaspy. When you come upon them, you'll suck air.
Neener neener. |
