(no subject)

[torquill]

Yesterday I dug the Naked Ladies. (No, no, they're a flower. Amaryllis belladonna.)

It was the perfect time to do it, as they'll be dormant until late summer, and I've been meaning to get to it for the last couple of years. The drawback to the timing is that the soil took a pick to break through... which is why I didn't do it last year. Yesterday I had the energy and remembered.

I ended up with almost fifty pounds (three large grocery bags) of enormous bulbs. Many of them were the size of a good-sized grapefruit, some were even bigger. I didn't need that many, so I took two bags to school with me to give away.

I realized my error as I got off the train. After a great deal of creative engineering, I managed to get them all on the bike (the front basket would barely take one bag, which left the question of where to put the other one). I didn't even fall over. A few got homes in my plant path class, but I still had a lot left.

The inspired move was in putting a note on the chalkboard in my biochem lecture hall. There must have been 200 students attending today, and many came up to look; the bulbs went away in ones and twos, secreted away in bookbags or carried off clutched in someone's hand. I was left with two. Yay for a solution to the "free kittens" problem!

Now all I have to do is find another home for the ones I kept... they needed to be dug because they were on the edge of my isolation plot on the sidestrip, and I need to use that this year. They can probably go out front, I just need to find a good spot where they'll be out of the way. Good thing all they need is sun, not water.

I may get home in time to break up the rest of the plot with the pick and set up the water for it, then go die in the hot tub.

Comments

[foogod.livejournal.com]

I'm just envisioning a note on a college chalkboard:

Free naked ladies! Take as many as you want home with you!

[tiggerypum.livejournal.com]

*giggle* And wow - good job on finding homes for the kittens :)

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

Many years ago, a friend of mine was the friend of the director of the UC Davis arboretum. He might not be around anymore, I think but am not sure that he had a terminal illness at the time. Might be there. Might have moved on. Might have died.

Anyway, back at that time, he offered to give me and our mutual friend a tour of the arboretum. At one point, he said, "And here's the nude beach," pointing to a huge mass of naked ladies on the edge of Putah Creek." He told us that he had brought back roots from his parents' farm in Texas every year for the past quite-a-few years, building up the bank so that in August, it was a mess of gorgeous pink. It was pretty nifty.

[luna-torquill.livejournal.com]

I missed this month's Sick Plant Clinic, and I may miss July's because of Impact training... but I'll be there in August and September, I trust. I'll have to find that bank of the creek and have a look while I'm there, as they'll be blooming by then.

Pink is not a color I like much, but they're such great and faithful plants otherwise that I forgive them that.

[luna-torquill.livejournal.com]

Oops, you did say "Davis", not Berkeley. I guess I see "UC" and "Arboretum" and automatically think of the one I see every month, not the one off to the edge of the campus that I never go to. :)