This time of year most of the color and excitement in the garden comes from bird watching. Here’s one of my favorites, the spotted towhee. I took this picture from the kitchen window.
The only flowers blooming here now are inside. I’m into pelargoniums these days, and got a bunch of new ones from Mike Kintgen back in September. Most of the cuttings are rooted and a few are even starting to bloom.
‘Phyllis’
‘Black Boar’
Pelargonium reniforme has deep purple flowers and scalloped leaves that look like a sea shell.
Cyclamen have been a favorite for a few years now. They’re easy to grow if you have a cool house. They don’t like heat and will quickly go dormant if you keep your home much above 70. They like this old drafty house. Some of them are over three years old, and huge. This plant blooms about eleven months out of the year, but it’s best blooms are in winter.
It’s blooms so much it drops seeds that sprout beneath the leaves.
See the little leaves at the bottom of the plant? Those are cyclamen seedlings.
Another view of the seedlings as I separate them from the parent plant.
Seedling looking forlorn, waiting to be transplanted.
Here are the seedlings after transplanting. They look all gangly and silly now, because they were growing underneath the big leaves of the original plant.
These are seedlings from a year ago. They are getting ready to bloom.
