The Bulb Maven

Telos Rare Bulbs

The busiest part of the shipping season is over.  Orders have ground to a halt, and I can turn my attention to more pressing needs, getting the greenhouses ready for winter.  This is still a very busy time of year, since all the bulbs that are in storage must be replanted, and seeds of the winter-growing species are sown this time of year.  My two young helpers just finished repotting the Lachenalias, and I will spend time sowing seeds today.  I posted on seed sowing before, and this posting can be found when you scroll down 'Categories'.

I have been working on my warm greenhouse, doing mostly housekeeping chores, and it is a pleasure to walk in there now, with all the dead leaves removed from the plants, the pots all weeded, rows organized and floors swept.  This greenhouse holds most of the South American species, including the members of the Family Amaryllidaceae.  There are some South American bulbs, like Leucocoryne, that grow on a Mediterranean cycle, and these are grown along with the South African species in my Mediterranean greenhouse.  When I say it is a warm greenhouse, it is not actually heated at all.  I have a large bench with heating mats for the species that need warm night-time temperatures, since our nights here are cold even in summer, but the rest of the greenhouse has to handle our temperatures here, and they seem to do fine.  I have this greenhouse tightly closed up in winter, which will keep it at least ten degrees F. above the ambient temperature at night, and on sunny days it can still get quite warm.  We do get frost here, but usually no more than a couple of degrees, and the low temperature at night will only last for an hour or two. 

The South African members of the Family Amaryllidacea (like Boophone, Brunsvigia, Cyrtanthus, etc.) are also in this greenhouse.  During the busy shipping season things can get rather chaotic in this greenhouse, since none of these bulbs are stored dry for shipping, but are freshly unpotted, roots washed and packed in damp material, and shipped intact.  Removing roots from a bulb that keeps permanent roots year round, like the Amaryllids, will set it back severely, so if the roots are kept intact and not allowed to dry out, and the bulb planted right away, it will hardly know anything has happened to it.  This is incredibly labor-intensive.  I have some bulbs in individual pots, but others are planted together, since they need depth to develop properly, and that means tipping a pot out, selecting a good bulb, and putting the others back.  I once packed a large order of all Amaryllid species which took the better part of two days to extract, clean and pack.  The recipient (in Denmark) planted them as soon as she received them, and they did well.  Many nursery owners would think this is insanely inefficient, but I simply don't know how to do it any other way if I want to grow a bulb properly, and send it bare root.  I have some of the small seedling bulbs in small pots called bands, but they will not increase in size once put into these pots, so their use is limited.

My helpers and I are also working on the Mediterranean greenhouse, repotting Gladiolus, Lachenalia and Moraea.  We have finished the Oxalis section, and the native bulbs, such as Calochortus, are yet to be done.  In despair this summer I said I was discontinuing native bulbs, but this was in reaction to my losing all my lilies, most Erythroniums and nearly all my Fritillarias due to our cold, wet spring.  I have reconsidered, especially since I was able to get some lily seed this summer, so I am not giving up yet.

www.telosrarebulbs.com

A New Year Dawns

This morning it actually stopped raining, our first non-rainy morning in many, many days.  The dawn sky was beautiful, with a sliver of moon floating in an almost clear sky.  The property is still flooded with pools of water everywhere, but the greenhouses are dry and the bulbs are flourishing.

The year was a good one here at Telos, with many exciting bulb events, like the first flowering of Paramongaia weberbauerii.  I have been growing rare and unusual bulbs from seed for almost twenty years now.  Learning about the bulbs and how to grow them (and where to get the seed) has been an exciting adventure, made much easier these days by the Internet.  At first it was an uphill stuggle (but then, I used to be a rock climber!), and a lot of trial and error - LOTS of error, and much wasted seed - but these days you can Google just about anything and come up with useful information.  I am happy, for although I have most of the information under my belt now, my customers may not, and the more information that is available about these wonderful treasures, the better it is for all concerned.

In looking back at the year that has passed, I feel very blessed to have the life I do.  I have work that I love, work that is constantly exciting and challenging, work that results in beauty, and in pleasure for other people also.  I am past the age of 'retirement', but hope I will never retire from growing bulbs.

The new additions to Telos have grown.  Take a look at Mamie (the grey and white one) and Lucy (the black and white one).  They have learned their jobs well, and I have had NO LOSSES TO MICE!!!!   I have to say that again - NO losses to mice.  Each year I have lost valuable bulbs, some that I have not been able to replace, to the depredations of mice.  Now, with no effort on my part, they are at bay.  The dogs have accepted the cats and even seem to like them, but terriers are not to be trusted with cats, so I never leave them alone together, but when I am working with the bulbs they are mostly unsupervised and do very well. 

The dogs won so many ribbons last year I have stopped counting, and Hannah is very close to getting her championship.  Along the way we have made many great friends, and even when we don't win we always have a wonderful time.  In September we took a trip to Oregon, first to an agility trial near Salem, then the following week to another in Bend, spending the five days in between hiking in the Deschutes National Forest.  It was absolute heaven being in the mountains for five whole days hiking the trails surrounded by spectacular scenery.  Those strange collars are GPS collars (not shock collars), since the little devils love to take off after squirrels, and I don't want to lose them.  Now I always know where they are, even if I lose sight of them.

Oxalis season is well under way, the earlier Oxalis starting to bloom in October, so here is a picture of one, O. pulchella, to end the year, with many more to come.

Happy New Year, and happy bulb growing in 2011.   

www.telosrarebulbs.com

The Morning Walkabout

After a long, cold, miserable spring, Mother Nature finally took pity on us, and the weather turned glorious for the Fourth of July weekend, with sunny days in the low 70F range.  The village of Ferndale, where I live, has many celebrations going on for the weekend, including a parade and a spectacular fireworks display, so the sunny weather was most welcome for the events.  Watching fireworks burst in a dense fog cloud, as can happen, is missing the point.

Without the morning fog, the dawn sky has been beautiful, the sun slowly rising above the mountains to the east to bathe the fields in a golden glow.  My morning begins before dawn, and I love to watch the sky slowly change color as the birds awaken.  When I moved to this property seven years ago, there was little birdsong, the four acre property, and the fields surrounding it, being almost completely bare of trees and shrubs.  My first two years here were completely consumed in getting the nursery up and running, but I have been planting what I hope will become a dense windbreak, and it is starting to fill in.  Now there are many more birds, since they have nesting places and shelter, and I hope this will get even better as time goes on.

Each morning I call the dogs for our morning walkabout, when we walk around the garden and the nursery area to see what we can see.  Just before this, I was in my tiny kitchen in the barn, when I heard my dogs barking outside in a very frenzied manner, quite different from their usual "someone is coming down the driveway" barking.  I went outside, and they had a hawk cornered in my little sitting area.  I thought the poor thing was injured, since it was panting and had its wings extended.  I quickly called the dogs inside, then quietly sat and watched at some distance.  It walked very cautiously past me, then took to flight, apparently none the worse for its encounter.

With the warmer weather, my small collection of Mexican bulbs are starting to bloom.  the stunningly beautiful purple Bessera elegans has opened its buds, as has the sweetly scented Milla biflora, with large waxy white flowers.

I only have a few of the Mexican Calochortus species.  Unlike those from the western USA, Mexican Calochortus grow in the summer, and are dormant in winter.  They are not as variable as the American ones, but have a charm of their own.   Here is C. marcellae to the left, and C. pringlei to the right.

I haven't taken the trouble to propagate my Mexican Calochortus species, so I don't have any available, but I usually have the different colors of Bessera, as well as Milla.  With only myself doing virtually all the work of the nursery, I have to make some difficult decisions, as far as which bulbs to propagate and which bulbs to keep just for my own enjoyment.  I have two large greenhouses, and can't put up more, for then I would need full time help, so greenhouse space is at a premium, and some bulbs will always be there just to please me.  I do get occasional requests from collectors asking "You don't happen to have .....?", and often I do have what they are seeking and can spare one or two bulbs.

Petronymphe decora has sent up buds, but will bloom a little later.  I feel very lucky to have this rare species in my collection, and usually have some bulbs to spare.

Harvesting bulbs continues.  I still have most of the California species to take out of their pots, since they bloom at the end of spring, and I am awaiting the ripening of their seeds.  I have carefully hand pollinated the Calochortus and some of the Brodiaeas, this year with good results.  It is a slow and tedious job, and sometimes I have still lost my seed and all the work I put into pollinating due to adverse weather conditions.

With summer here, my work increases considerably, and that will continue until the end of the year.  I am happy!  Although I have been called a workaholic by some friends, I take exception to that very pejorative term.  I LOVE my work.  It makes me happy just to walk into my greenhouses in the morning.  I feel blessed. 

www.telosrarebulbs.com  

A New Year Dawns

The year always ends at Telos with an overwhelming amount of work, racing against time to repot the bulbs and trying to fill those last minute orders.  Complicating matters were some health issues, not life threatening, but certainly incapacitating for a while, so blogging came to a screeching halt during that period.

With the New Year, things now settle down to that blessed time in the nursery when things start sprouting and blooming, and my main tasks are to keep pots watered and fertilized, while gradually repotting the Amaryllids, a task that has no real deadline, so it is relaxed and spread out over the next three months.  Many Oxalis are in bloom now, and I am very excited about my new benches, which improve drainage and air circulation and make work much easier.

While working in the Mediterranean greenhouse two days ago, I heard loud screaming bird cries and ran to the door to see two bald eagles locked together tumbling out of the sky, to fall in the pasture about fifteen feet away from me.  Those are big birds!  The combat/play continued, and they flew away flapping their huge wings and locking talons to tumble through the air again.  What a sight!

I have posted before on earthquakes in Ferndale, and yesterday we had a very serious 6.5 earthquake that caused some damage to the town.  I was in the kitchen of my main house about to bake a cake when the earthquake struck.  All those things they say about earthquakes, like getting under a doorway, or getting outside, or whatever else you are supposed to do, go completely out the window.  It is so overwhelming you just go on instinct, and all I could do was safeguard my dogs and try to stop my china cabinet, full of antique crystal and china, from toppling over, amid the sound of crashing furniture and breaking glass.  It seemed to go on forever with several huge jolts, then ending with wave like motion that gradually subsided.  My dogs were terrified, with Willie acting dazed and unresponsive, while Hannah was hiding trembling under the coffee table.  I have a tranquillizer for Willie, since he is terrified of fire works, so I had just got it refilled for New Year's, and I stuffed one down both dogs.  I am fond of antique china and glass, and have many antique dishes displayed around the house.  Amazingly, not a one was broken.  All of the breakages were of ordinary household dishes and some picture glass, plus a plant pedestal outside.  I have a large fountain in the herb garden.  It was full of water when the quake struck, but empty afterwards.  My neighbor Wayne came over right away to see if we were all right, and warned me that aftershocks could be as big or bigger than the one we had just experienced, so after sweeping up the debris I left everything down on the ground, and put some things down that hadn't fallen.  I didn't sleep much last night, still full of adrenalin and worrying about aftershocks.

Life goes on.  The nursery was unaffected by the earthquake, with only a few pots being shaken off the benches.  I will be happy when the next week has passed and with it the threat of major aftershocks.

www.telosrarebulbs.com

Can you ........

..... teach an old dog new tricks?  Well, here is Hannah with her new trick.  OK, she isn't an old dog, she will be five next month, and theoretically in her prime.  Those are cookies balanced on her paws, and she has learned that if she waits until I say 'get it' she gets both of them.  Willie, however, just eats them.  "Wait" he says.  "Phooey".

But here is a genuine old 'dog' with a new trick -- ME!  One of the advantages of living almost next door to the Fairgrounds, is that after the fair is over there are literally mountains of poopy straw and wood chips that they need to get rid of.  I like the wood chips from the stables occupied by the race horses best.  The straw blows around a bit in this windy environment, but the chips stay put and look very nice.  I can get as much as I want free, delivered to my house, and since the soil here is very dense and lacking in organic material, it is like solid gold to me.  I had eight big dump truck loads delivered, intending to use it on my field that is being converted to a wild garden. 

Well, that was a LOT of stuff, so Mark and I decided to rent a Bobcat, needed anyway to repair my driveway, and spread it all in one day.  That looked like so much fun, that I insisted that I wanted to do it, so he graciously showed me how to run the machine, and off I went.  It was GREAT!  Here is the area I am working on to put in a wild garden and create a wind break. 

 

I think at my advanced age I am learning the fascination men have for big machines.  What's next?  Guns??  The two young twenty-something men that help Mark were a bit astonished at the idea of me running the Bobcat, but, honestly, there was nothing to it.  Easier than driving a car.  I was a bit slow, so around mid-afternoon I handed it over to Mark, who finished the job.

Work on the greenhouses continues.  We have almost finished one, and will start on the next one when another pallet of greenhouse bench tops arrive.  The shipping of orders continues.  There is usually a flurry of orders this time of year, when people start thinking about planting bulbs, although the shipping season will start to wind down soon.  Seed sowing and propagating bulbs will start in earnest as soon as the greenhouse benches are finished.  This is actually the busiest time of year for me, since shipping bulbs, sowing seeds and the repotting of bulbs starts to overlap.  I like the change in pace, though, and I am excited about my new greenhouse benches.

www.telosrarebulbs.com

Greenhouse work

The seasons march on, and this time of year I am thinking constantly of what lies ahead:  seed sowing the Mediterranean species; reorganizing the greenhouses; repotting most of the bulbs and getting ready for winter in general.  Autumn is the busiest season as far as bulb care is concerned, since the Mediterranean climate bulbs must all be repotted before they start to grow around the end of October to the middle of November.  A few can wait a bit longer, and during the same time period seed must be sown of most species.  Some bulbs multiply, but others, like Calochortus, must be sown every fall, and it is a very big job. 

In preparation for the tasks ahead, I am completely reorganizing my Mediterreanean greenhouse and having benches made.  In the past I have had all the pots on the floor.  This was largely due to the expense involved of buying or making benches, but now I am happy to say that I am able to invest the needed money.  This is helped by a new product, a plastic bench top that is light weight, easy to clean and relatively inexpensive.  Before now greenhouse benches were made of metal, so they were very heavy, very expensive and would degrade over time.  The new bench tops are UV stable, and should last a long time.  Here above I am in the process of moving every single pot twice, fist off the floor and out of the way as each bench is brought in, then organizing them alphabetically on the benches (and still smiling!).  I won't trust anyone else to move them, since they must be kept striclty organized or I simply can't find things.  Even so, as I put Calochortus plummerae in place, I will inevitably stumble across a couple of pots of C. bruneaunis that I overlooked, necessitating moving them all again.  Arrrgh!

Mark and Shawn, seen here, have also put a new ventilation system in, and now the greenhouses are vented automatically, keeping the temperature well below 85F even on warm sunny days.  Both the new benches and the new ventilation system are intended to make my work easier and more efficient, and, hopefully, to reduce losses.  The problem I have had with the pots on the floor is inadequate drainage, with the bottom layer of potting medium not drying out completely in the bulbs' summer dormancy.  Summer dormant bulbs need to be kept completely dry during their dormancy, so any excess moisture can encourage rotting.  I am expecting that elevating the pots off the ground will improve things considerably with better drainage, better air circulation and easier access.

www.telosrarebulbs.com  

After the Fair

The Fair has ended.  On Sunday, the last day, the ferris wheel was all lit up at 10pm when I looked out of my bedroom window.  The following morning at 6am it was gone.  The crews must work all night dismantling the rides, and packing them up to go on to their next assignment.  The field opposite my house, filled with cars and trucks over the weekend, is completely empty, the grass trampled, and bits of paper drifting here and there.

The most striking thing is the almost palpable quiet.  The sense of peace that has descended is complete, and has a feeling of expansion to it, as though the bustle and noise of the Fair overwhelmed the senses, and now that it is gone, one can again see the views, hear the surf and allow the mind to wander wherever it wants.

Now that we are edging towards September, there is a slight chill in the air in the morning.  Asters and Sedum are in bloom in the garden, reminding me to plant more next year.  The birds' nests are empty, and there are flocks of birds gathering, ready to make their migrations, their family life behind them.  Each season has its flavor, and autumn, to me, has a rosy golden glow, even though in this cool foggy part of the world we don't have much in the way of fall colors.  When I was a child in England I loved the autumn best of all, even better than summer.  I think I liked the changes, from leafy green, through all the tints of autumn to the bareness of winter, and I loved the crispness of the mornings.  It was also the start of fox hunting season, a passion of my blood-thirsty youth, and one of those strange contradictions that humans are comfortable with, for I was also a passionate animal lover.

I still have that feeling of excitement in autumn, as though it is a beginning, not an ending.  Maybe that's why I became a bulb grower, for this is the start of so many things - the blooming of the members of the Family Amaryllidaceae, the start of seed sowing, the stirring of the bulbs into growth.  There is no visible sign yet on most of the dormant bulbs, but the dropping temperatures at night are nudging them awake, and soon they will produce shoots, and, with the autumn rains, they will burst into growth.  We are promised an El Nino winter, something to be dreaded in this very wet, soggy valley, so preparations are being taken to protect the bulbs.  We have been through it before.  Here is a picture of the Ferndale Valley taken by my friend, Susan, about three or four winters ago.  Telos Rare Bulbs is out there somewhere in the watery waste. 

We survived.

www.telosrarebulbs.com  

The Morning Walkabout

This is the time of year when we are away at dog trials on some weekends, having just returned from Oregon, where we did respectably well.  As soon as we are back, we slip into our routine of an early morning walk around the nursery, usually at sunrise. 

This morning gauzy, low-lying mists enveloped the fields, and as the sun rose they all turned to a brilliant orange hue.  The effect only lasted a few minutes, then the sun rose above the low banks of mist when they changed to opalescent colors before disappearing completely.

Yesterday it was so windy it was hard to work outside, so we all went off to gather seeds about an hour south of here.  There is a steep cliff by the road covered in Calochortus amabilis, and now is the time the seed is ripe.  Here they are to the left, in bloom about six weeks ago. It was a beautiful drive through the redwoods and we found a trail for the dogs to run, chasing each other happily through the poison oak (bath time when we got home).  It takes all my old rock climbing skills to get a few pods of this Calochortus, but I don't have to feel guilty about collecting them, since the seeds would undoubtedly fall on the road below where they would be doomed.

Walking around the nursery a couple of weeks ago, I noticed a little white crowned sparrow dart out from one of my Bomareas.  Usually I trim all the old stems off the Bomareas in about April or May, making room for new growth, but I had left four or five, since seed was still ripening on them.  It happened again the next day, so I investigated, and found the most perfect nest snuggled in the stems.  The eggs soon hatched, but the babies disappeared a couple of days after hatching, probably victims of the raccoons.

In the greenhouse where I grow my tender subtropical bulbs, a few things are blooming.  Bulbs from equatorial regions seem to bloom whenever they feel like it, also going dormant erratically, so my pots of Eucrosias have some dormant bulbs, some with leaves and some in bloom.  Here is Eucrosia aurantiaca, one of the more spectacular bulbs from Ecuador.  Also in bloom is the rather strange Sprekelia formosissima from Mexico, seen here to the right.  There are, I believe, two Sprekelia species, both from Mexico, S. formosissima and S. howardii, a recently described species that I have finally got my hands on, although they haven't bloomed yet.

The powder-puff blossoms of the South African Haemanthus humilis ssp. hirsutus is in bloom, white with pink bracts and very attractive.

I was very thrilled to see emerging buds on my Hymenocallis hawkesii (probably more correctly named as Ismene hawkesii).  I had obtained seedling bulbs some time ago, and now they have matured to bloom size.  This is an extremely rare species from Peru, where it grows at about 6000'. Here it is to the right.  

Work in the nursery continues with seed gathering and unpotting the dormant bulbs.  The native bulbs are the last to go dormant, and can't be harvested until their seed has ripened, so this will continue well into July.  The South African bulbs have mostly been lifted by now, with Oxalis being the first batch to be unpotted, and Oxalis orders already being shipped. 

Summer is upon us, with sunny days preceded by morning fog in our area.  The fields are being mown for hay, the cows all glossy, fat and contented.  The solstice has already passed.  I always feel a touch of sadness at the summer solstice that they days are incrementally shortening, although we will still have daylight beyond 9pm for a while.  I love these long days.  I can work in my garden until dusk or take the dogs to the beach at sunset.  I wish it would last forever. 

www.telosrarebulbs.com

Planting for Wildlife

Gardening magazines are encouraging us to plant our flower gardens to attract wildlife, the natural habitats of most wildlife having become much reduced or degraded.  It's true that most gardening magazines are produced by people in New York City or somewhere similar, where wildlife means rats or questionable humans, and when I moved to my present home I, too, felt a need to encourage 'wildlife', with dancing images in my head of butterflies, bluebirds and sweet little roly-poly hedgehogs.  OK, we don't have hedgehogs in the USA, but then some of the articles I read are in English magazines.

I must say I have been successful, although not with the hedgehogs.  My garden abounds in wildlife --deer chomping my trees, shrubs and anything else they want, gophers eating the roots of the same trees, shrubs and anything else (I can't even plant bulbs in my own garden), 'possums eating everything, mice ditto, raccoons -- well, the raccoons are a story in themselves.

I live most of the time in my barn.  A very nice barn, all fixed up, but it came with its own residents who feel they have squatters rights, since they were here first.  My barn cat Annie takes care of the mice, or they take care of her, since she eats them.  The 'possums are a problem off an on, but recently I came downstairs one morning to find the work area a total wreck, things scattered all over the place, bins knocked over, cat food everywhere.  A zippered bag had had the contents removed.  The bag was mostly closed, but there was a gap about three inches wide, and everything inside the bag had been taken out, camping spoons and forks, some small containers of dog food, dog toys, etc.  A raccoon!!  With their human-like little hands they can get into anything.  In addition, the back door to the barn was wide open.  The handle is a lever handle, and the little stinker had figured out how to reach up and pull down on the handle to open the door.

Well, this was too much!  At one time I was charmed by raccoons, feeling that they were like wildlife dressed up for Halloween with their bandit-like appearance, but then I learned that they truly are the bandits of the backyard.  They will steal anything, attack and can kill your pets, destroy your pond and eat your fish, and break into your barn.  I once had a much loved pet chicken called Rosa, and finding her decapitated one morning completely finished off any sentimental feeling I had for raccoons. A fox would have had the decency to eat her for dinner, but a raccoon will kill chickens just for fun.  It was war.

It turned out that there were two raccoons, and they were nesting under my house (I haven't had the nerve to see what damage they have done under there).  The first one was not too difficult to trap, although it was so big I could hardly life the trap myself, so my neighbor Wayne came over and we transported it to the river about a couple of miles off.  The second one was more of a challenge, but after a week of trying several things I finally tricked it into entering the trap, and it, too, was transported to Botany Bay.  I must say I felt a pang of compassion, for when I approached the trap it huddled in one corner and covered its eyes with its little hand.  Such a human gesture.

So, having attracted all this wildlife, I am now busy getting rid of it.  Hmmm.

www.telosrarebulbs.com

February

After a long spell of really beautiful (and much too warm) weather, winter has returned, with one storm front after another marching across the Pacific Ocean, and bringing cold, wet and windy weather.  In the greenhouses yesterday a hail storm erupted, and the noise was so intense that when I tried to call the dogs I couldn't even hear my own voice.  The wind is bitterly cold, making work outside virtually impossible, but in the spell of sunny weather I was able to start clearing out a big flower bed in my front garden, removing shrubs that were not particularly attractive and perennials that were becoming invasive.  I have little time to spend on the garden, so anything that spreads or seeds itself about is now permanently banned.  The wind makes it impossible to grow large or lanky things, either, so out they went too.  Now the bed is completely replanted with clumping perennials, some bulbs and small compact shrubs, and I am looking forward to seeing how it will fill in.  It has been great fun, and I am reassured that I can still do heavy digging and shrub removal.

During the sunny spell the Oxalis were breathtaking, literally a carpet of color in my Mediterranean climate greenhouse.  Oxalis obtusa is at its peak with beautiful veined flowers in a wide range of lovely colors, all shades imaginable of orange, many different pinks and yellows and various combinations.  I am choosing new ones to list on the web site, racking my brain to think up names, since I have completely run out of color descriptions.  The one above is Oxalis obtusa 'Strawberry Cream'.  It is interesting that the color intensity of Oxalis obtusa varies from year to year.    I have not figured out why, whether it is temperature, sunshine or nutrients.  This year the colors are particularly intense.  Here is O. o. 'Buttercream' to the left and O. o. 'Lemon Cream to the right.

This is the time of year when bulb work is far less.  Seed sowing continues, but is almost done.  The winter-growing species need watering and fertilizing regularly, and this year I am fertilizing them with a liquid fertilizer at every watering, diluting it to half strength.  I have had difficulty keeping to a schedule of fertilization, sometimes forgetting to write down what I did, so this is easier to keep track of.  I also treat the seedlings for damping off fungus, very prevalent in this cold damp environment, and I keep fans on the pots of seedlings to keep the air circulating.  I am repotting some of the South American species, plus twin scaling some rare bulbs that I need more of and that are slow to reproduce.

It is the time, also, when I start revising the web site.  I am getting very frequent "can I order now?" inquiries, since the site still has 2008 on it, and I don't want to change it until I have it largely done.  Customers can order now, but with the proviso that there might be changes that will affect their order.  I usually have the web site finished by the end of March or beginning of April.  I have great difficulty sitting still for any length of time, so I have to do my computer work in chunks of a couple of hours at the most, then get up and do something else. 

I am looking forward to spring, which comes early in California.  The storms are welcome, for the entire state is in the middle of a drought that started about two years ago, with reservoirs badly depleted.  I am thinking forward to the dog trials and my yearly trip to Table Mountain in the Sierra Nevada foothills to see the wildflowers, and hoping to squeeze in a trip to the high country in the middle of summer.  So much to look forward to!

www.telosrarebulbs.com