Blooming today in Shadyside.
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Snowdrops
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Witch Hazel
Ozark witch hazel (Hamamelis vernalis) is one of old Pa Pitt’s favorite plantings. It blooms in the dead of winter; it keeps its petals closed until a warmer day comes along, and then it unfurls its little red flowers and floods its surroundings with perfume. But if you bring in a few twigs and put them in a vase, you don’t have to wait for a warm day. The flowers will unfurl within hours, and then in a day or two the perfume will start filling your house. You can have a fresh bouquet from the garden in the middle of January.
The twiggy bouquets make an interesting display, and for some reason it occurred to Father Pitt that he should attempt to photograph one in the manner of the 1930s.
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Chrysanthemums
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Morning Glories
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Garlic Chives
Garlic Chives (Allium tuberosum) blooming in a city garden.
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Periwinkles
Catharanthus roseus in most classification systems, but Vinca rosea in the garden trade.
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French Marigolds
Old Pa Pitt uses various digital cameras that are cheap, old, or both; but when the desired effect is to make a foreground object stand out from the blurred background, it helps to have a DSLR. It helps even more to have a DSLR with a supplementary macro lens, which gives us a very shallow depth of field. The camera that took these pictures is an Olympus E-20n, which is old enough to vote and next year will be old enough to drink. But as long as it keeps taking pictures like these, old Pa Pitt will keep it in the camera bag.
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Magnolia Blossom
Blooming in late July on the South Side.
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It’s Daylily Time Again
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First Daylilies, Last Tulips
Yes, since you ask, Father Pitt did plant tulips right in front of this patch of daylilies so he could take these pictures proving that these daylilies do really bloom as early as the end of tulip season. The pictures were taken on May 13, and old Pa Pitt does not know of any other daylilies blooming that early in the city. The variety has no name, since it came from a batch of mixed unnamed hybrid seedlings.
