My garden is glowing

I came back from our trip to discover all my rose bushes covered in flowers, not to mention several other plants and bulbs that were all shouting spring spring spring!!

One of such, is my Dragon Arum… I have a modest collection of more readily available arums, a white, a green, a black, a funny green one, and a dragon arum, which is not a ‘true’ arum as such. With a latin name of Dracunculus Vulgaris if you want to do some more research on it. My mother got these bulbs for me, but as I was slow to get the garden ready they lived and flowered in her garden for a couple of seasons. I dug them up and planted them here last autumn I think, so this is the first flower. And then, I get 4 flowers, all at once!!

Although i have to admit, they DO pong a bit. Just for the first couple of days. These fascinating plants are pollinated by FLIES. They have no nectar for bees, instead they emit this smell to attract flies, who crawl all over them, looking for the source. A commoner name for this arum is “Dead Horse” arum, but never having smelt a dead horse, I can’t testify to it’s literary truthfulness. To me it smells like, eewwww someone forgot to empty the rubbish bin and it’s been sitting in the sun. Not vilely throwing up in the gutter bad, just an unpleasant, move along kind of smell.

But the flowers are irresistible!!

They are also quite big, over 30 cm long… You don’t easily over look these flowers.My roses are all looking stunning at the moment. It seems that I did get my pruning right this year, as they say a good prune makes for more flowers, and that is certainly what I’ve got.

This is my Rhapsody in Blue rose.

I bought it for $3 at K-mart from the ‘dead’ plants section. Well it took a while to recover from it’s shaky start, but the past couple of years, it hasn’t looked back. This year it is already SMOTHERED in flowers. The only sad part is, they just don’t cut. They only last a day inside, so when I want to enjoy them, I go out the front to the bush instead.

And my lavender bush is humming contentedly, it’s simply COVERED in bees.