2008 Year in review (Part 1)

The obligatory (and hopefully entertaining) look back …

January

Not much happening in the garden, so it was a good time to think about ordering seeds and plants (unfortunately, they’re more than 5 cents a pack these days, unlike these old packs) and sharing stories about the great bowling ball accident of 2003.

castor bean seed packet

While there were no blooms (or scans), there was surprisingly much to photograph on a very warm January garden bloogers bloom day.

The ridge in January

February

February is for forcing
.

forced bulbs

And time to fiddle around with PhotoShopping that month’s bloom day scans and chase away the merry blues with Manu Chao.

bloom day scan feb

Had a sunset picture grace a CD cover.

Read and reviewed Tulipomania. Added my two cents (and a ton of pictures) to the Garden Bloggers’ Design Workshop – Color in the Garden edition.

March

I love March, if only for its excitement. There are the forced bulbs in flower

forced bulbs

The first of the spring ephemerals

crocuses

Then back to winter, hell and high water.

Fred and bottle tree

By Easter, plenty of signs that spring is on it’s way …

Iris

Then more snow. There’s a reason they’re called snowdrops, you know.
snowy snowdrops

April

Speaking of snowdrops, April brought the open house at snowdrop collector Hitch Lyman’s garden.

snowdrop

And the spring ephemeral peak at my place. Crocus …

ephemerals

Puschkinia.

scilla i think

Hyper-spring also brings scilla …

scilla siberica

… and erythronium.

trout lily

And by the end of the month, a bazillion daffodils, these at Nina Bassuk and Peter Trowbridge’s annual open house.

daffs

May

Spring continues full bore. Purple primrose …

mertensia

Thalia daffs

angelic daffs

Sakuraso primrose

Sakuraso primrose

…an iris from Marcia’s garden

marcia's garden

… and many more in this bloom day scan.

may scan with hard light effect

In the world of art, Quilter Lisa Ellis used one of my canna images for this work of art …

canna quilt

… Cornell students built this Turfwork! project

Turfwork! from the air. Photo by Peter Cadieux

… and Durand Van Doran built this fabulous floral gate — roots and all — in Minns Garden outside the building where I work.

Minn's garden gate

And we are reminded that there’s nothing new under the sun.

June

Some theme posts in June, because there’s so much to cover you’ve got to do some lumping. One on openings

openings

,,, another on chartreusey stuff …

chartreusey

… too many blooms on bloom day to fit onto one scan …

june scan

… actual bloom day pictures to go with the scans …

goatsbeard (Aruncus)

East Digitalistan

not digitalistan

… and decent images of aruncus (finally!) …

aruncus

summer songs


Mussolini was a-shavin’ whistlin’ tarantella,
Stalin was keeping eye on barbeque.
When their fish line bell started to jingle,
Mussolini caught a-nothin’, Stalin caught two.

On the art front, Cornell graduation turf art

cals sod sculpture

I tried to push back on the bland reporting on leaf casts in the garden media, and reported on the infamous Memorial Day jello contest.

As we head into the second half of the year, these alliums in Minns Garden outside the building where I work are all ready for 4th of July fireworks.

painted alliums

Part 2 starts here …

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6 thoughts on “2008 Year in review (Part 1)”

  1. I am always a little sad in the spring time when I see the beautiful bulbs everyone up north grows. Then I just remind myself of winter tomatoes. 😉

    What a great year you had in the garden.

  2. Well, you’ve certainly made my Monday morning. Hitch Lyman and bowling balls all in one post! I’ve ordered a few snowdrops from Hitch but they are, alas, too expensive for me these days. The first catalog he sent was hand-addressed in his stunning calligraphy. Worth the $5 fee alone. I have dozens of magazine images of his snowdrops and his property going way back. But your picture of the folly/shed is the most evocative I’ve seen — just lovely.

    Someday I will do a post on bowling ball sculpture — a Wisconsin specialty. My images are all slides and will take time to unearth and scan but they are a particular favorite subject. We have a green and black marbled ball that used to be in our former garden; currently it tops a redwood pedestal where it replaces a silver gazing ball killed by a falling branch.

    The bowling ball has a length of rebar glued inside one of the holes: my husband was testing glue for a sculpture project. We stuck the rebar post into the ground so it just looked like a bowling ball sitting in the flower bed, only two feet off the sidewalk. Kids were always trying to steal the ball until the discovered they couldn’t roll it down the street. So we’d find it discarded a couple of houses down the block …

  3. This is a wonderful post with beautiful photos. I need to learn more about photography! I appreciate the vagaries of your spring weather – suffering in a similar way as I do on my Massachussetts hill.

  4. Craig,

    Your photography is just breathtaking. Thank you so much for posting such beautiful photos and capturing the best of the best in the garden and beyond. I am still ga-ga over your scans. Keep it up.

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