There comes a time each spring when the rush and excitement of the new growing season wears off and the realities from the previous year come back to haunt you.  There will be bugs, there will be snapped stems, the rabbits will eat the lettuce, and you will get hot and sweaty mowing the lawn.  It all seems like a lot of work and all the while the weeds keep growing.  But there’s plenty of magic.  Onions have been entertaining me lately and I’ll start with allium moly “Jeannine”.

allium moly “Jeannine” with sedum “Angelina” and a few perovskia seedlings. I like how the one perovskia has much fernier leaves than the other.

For some reason I used to dislike most of the flowering onions and only just recently let a few into the garden.  They seemed kind of weedy and never wowed me…. but I’ve been dabbling.  The big purple ones are a no brainer, and last fall I cracked open the wallet for this one (who’s name I can’t recall at the moment).  Surely a half dozen would have been nicer but gardening funds were short after snowdrop ‘dabbling’.

The front border is just coming out of a lull as the daisies and roses fire up.  Allium “Pinball Wizard” (I looked it up) has large blooms on short stems, all out of what I consider the “globemaster” family since they all seem similar to me.

Also new this year is allium nigrum, a ridiculously cheap white allium with good sized blooms on nice stems.  I like it!  The only complaint I have is the season falls right into oxeye daisy season, and the allium blooms are lost among the ‘common’ daisies.

Less impressive is my neglected allium karataviense “ivory queen”.  I like the foliage as much as the actual flowers since they have a cool pleated gray look that reminds me of some fancy South African bulb.

You’ll have to trust me on the foliage, it looks better in the weeks coming up to flowering. Plus this little “ivory queen” is just praying for someone to take it away from all this weedy mess.

Not an allium anymore (it’s been reclassified as nectaroscordum siculum) the Sicilian honey garlic is a bit of a floppy mess in my yard.  The stems twist around and then put up these ‘interesting’ blooms for a week or so before dropping back down into flopdom.

nectaroscordium siculum -Sicilian honey garlic- this glamour shot pulls out many of the subtle highlights of the blooms. The actual garden presence might be a little less than overwhelming…

Can I finish off with an onion from the vegetable patch?  This is allium fistulosum, nebuka evergreen bunching onion.  Supposedly it’s a tasty onion, but I have yet to give it a try.  Instead I’m enjoying the long lasting, fat bloom heads.

Nebuka onion, another subtle effect but it’s carefree, edible, and fuzzy!

There are a few more onions yet to come, but the lawn still needs mowing and it’s now or never, so off I go.  So much to do, so little time…. and sometimes so little energy 🙂