My lilacs and tiger lilies didn’t bloom at all this year, and only three of the tulips did, rather than the few hundred flowers I normally get from them. And I grow hardy species tulips rather than the delicate cultivars. Let’s hope next year is better. This year has been the single worst one I have ever had for fruit and flowers, both here and anywhere else I have lived. Normally I have plenty of flowers on my land for the bees both wild and domestic, the butterflies and the nectar-eating small birds, as well as yielding me a profitable amount of flowers to sell as ‘cottage flower bunches’ at the Farmers Market. I will not scant the animals of their food, so this is likely to be the second week I will have no flowers for the market. *grumblemuttercurse*.
At least I have been successful in propagating some of the food plants which are rare here such as Gynura and Basella, as well as some rare cacti and flowering groundcover succulents, and the New Zealand Rock Lily, which is also uncommon in these parts, and the lemon crop is coming on, so I will have something to sell at the market. I have lost my Chinese Ground Orchids to the weather, which is annoying because those are medicinal as well as pretty, but I know somebody who will trade me some for young fruit trees, and I have managed to trade some bromeliads and Gynura for new starts of Crosnes, which I had lost to the extreme weather last year. Glad of that, because as well as being for the market, crosnes are one of my favourite vegetables to eat, as well as having pretty flowers.
I’m glad your pæonies are surviving and blooming for you.
