Spring of Irises

Blue flag in the pond--Granny's Louisiana iris in the background

Last spring was the Spring of Poppies: the Papaver somniferum seeds that we had broadcast 2 years ago finally burst out of dormancy and shocked us with their sudden abundance of slightly louche blooms.

This seems to be the Spring of Irises: we've had 3 different cultivars blooming that have never bloomed before, plus the usual strong showing from the cemetery irises, and a couple floppy-stemmed I. virginica blossoms.

The new irises are:

• yellow Louisiana irises from my grandmother's garden (in Louisiana)
• blue flags from the LadyBird Johnson Wildflower Center
• white grape-scented irises from I'm-not-sure-where

Mysterious grape-scented iris

I've never been particularly iris-centric, which is part of what is making this such a nice surprise.  Our garden has reached the degree of maturity that is contains things that we plan for and expect, and also things that have slowly, sneakily reached their prime, or things we just kind of tossed in offhand.

I really, really like this combination of known and unknown quantities. The known plants are like a holiday that you look forward to every year.  Anticipated, finally arriving, much like you remembered, not quite the same, each with its own memories. The unknowns are like a gift.  (And then there are rampaging monsters-- both known and unknown--like that execrable, motherliking bermudagrass, but it's much too pretty an evening to waste thinking about bermudagrass.  God, I do hate that stuff, though).

Not to be too perky (because my natural habitat is the dark side--if a glass is half full, that's probably because it was left out a couple of days ago and now tastes stale and has a gnat floating in it--but who are we kidding? we all know that glass is half empty), but the garden is full of loveliness right now.

Most winter, one or both pond pumps were out.  Matt got them back in order and I love the pond with all the water going. LOVE it. I could (and do) sit here for hours, just absorbing.

Pond with functional pumps and Granny's iris

Not only is Granny's iris blooming, it looks great where we stuck it on the spur of a moment--it fills a sort of dead corner of the pond, softens the waterfall's rock pile, and gives the illusion of order just by being so vertical and clean-lined.

Three baby cardinals hatched, grew, and flew off from a nest their parents built in the gazebo's 'Buff Beauty' rose. Not a very good location, as we have been constantly by the pond, enjoying the weather, checking on the babies, and making the parents nervous. But it worked out in the end.

A very pretty daylily (Patricia Snyder Memorial, which I bought a couple of years ago from the man who hybridized it at Paynes in Grass in Houston), which has always been a bit delicate, is full of its first buds.

The Crinum macowannii that I bought as a great fleshy green seed several years ago now has a heavy umbel of flowers that smell like perfumed soap.

Crinum macowannii--I wish it would hold its head up, because the flowers are lovely and they smell gorgeous

Our pond is now hosting two baby turtles!  Matt says we have to catch them and humanely relocate them or they'll eat all our fish, but as they are currently the size of silver dollar pancakes, I'm not too fussed just yet.  Soon, though.  Those fish have enough to worry about without being harried by a pair of voracious reptilian freeloaders.

A smooth green tree frog had been hanging out in our blacklocust for the past week or so, looking adorably compact and vibrant.

The Chestnut Rose is putting on its first blooms, and--though still short--it is forming an impenetrable thicket of tiny leaves, suggesting the beautiful wall of dense privacy it will someday provide. 

All my herb acquisitions (including two more new ones: African blue basil, and a purple-leaved orange mint) are doing well, and Lavendula 'Otto Quast' looks especially happy. (All except 'Pink Lemonade' thyme--it looked feeble when we got it, and it hasn't improved since. The dittany of Crete, which I thought was so obscure and cutting edge but is now absolutely everywhere to my chagrin, is doing quite well, though.) 

'Otto Quast' lavender in front, 'Victoria Blue' salvia behind, and Caryopteris to the right.  You can see a little of the baby 'Margo Koster' rose, as well.

No bats in the bathouse yet, though.  I'm hoping the baby cardinals will give positive reviews of our garden's hospitality.

The pond.  In spring.  Gosh, it's nice.

New Things

2012 was a good year in terms of garden expansion. We added  number of new plants, and some of our 2011 additions bloomed for the first time.

But somehow, not all of the new material made it to the blog.  So, in no particular order, here are some new things from Jan 2012 and beyond. 

A particularly nice ''Kronprinzessin Viktoria' blossom--her blooms have a tendency to untidiness that I'm not wild about, but this particular flower is nicely geometrical.

'White Cloud' Muhly on a foggy morning--also 'Black Moudry' below.

Our first 'Wedding Cake' bloom!  The plants are less than 8" tall, so this was an especially admirable effort.  These are SUCH weird roses--the petals are strangely thick, almost vinyl like.

One of the first flowers ever on our 'Fortune's Double Yellow,' a rose I've been yearning for since, oh, 1995 or so.   We bought it last year and it's already a 5-foot tall toothy beast. Tiny teeth, but a zillion of them, and all sharply recurved.  You can easily stick your hand in a FDY--but don't count on getting it back out again. It's like the world's most vicious velcro.  Pretty, though.

 
 More FDY

'Dainty Bess'--one of Matt's favorites.  A bit hard to photograph unless you catch it at just the right moment (which this isn't).

'General Gallieni'--just a tiny little newly planted band at the time, but it threw out this nice little bud nevertheless (and which, if I were a proper rose lover, I would have pinched off so the little guy could put all his energy into his roots--but I just couldn't bear to).

Our first bloom from the yellow Louisiana iris from my grandmother's yard!

A particularly nice bloom from 'Rhodologue Jules Gravereaux.' He's less than 1 foot high, only about 6 months old, and yet he's sporting 5 very nice flowers, including this nicely shaded specimen.

'Red Smith's Parish'--why "Red" when it's quite obviously pink?  I do not know.  Perhaps it ruddies up with age?  It appears to be quite free-blooming, though, having had at least one flower on it since February, despite being a little baby of a thing.

'Mrs Dudley Cross'--a very petalliferous Tea rose.

Finally, an okay(ish) picture of 'Spice'!  I find this rose hard to photograph, despite its being a very generous bloomer.

Another 'Spice.'

I love this white scabiosa.  Popular with the pollinators, too.  Must be nectarlicious.

Fall Color, New Herbs, Bathouse!

Considering that this is Texas--and not Vermont--our yard actually had some decent fall color.  The only problem is that is doesn't have it till mid-January.

Here's one of our Lacey oaks turning a nice blend of golds, oranges, and browns, making a radiant backdrop for Lewie, our pop-eyed berserker chessman.

 

And here's our Montezuma cypress (Taxodium mucronatum), finally turning russet, with another Lacey oak to the right.

The Montezuma cypress is basically green 11 months out of the year, red-brown for three weeks, bare for 1 week, and then in starts over again.  At least, that seems to be its pattern so far. It's still only about half bare, but it's already sprouting tiny spikes of green all over.

It's been a pretty mild winter, as you can tell by our rampant umbrella plant.  We've had, oh, 10 or a dozen nights dipping below freezing and even into the 20s, but never really with much conviction.  Only quite tender plants have been knocked back, and of those, only the ones that aren't sheltered.

We have a white Crinum powellii (sort of visible in the top pic behind the potted plants), that is between a 'La Marne' rose and a fence with 2-inch gaps between each slat.  And it doesn't have a bit of freeze damage anywhere.  And roses 'Red Cascade' and 'Burgundy Iceberg' are actually still blooming (weirdly, on the north and east sides of the house--apparently, this year's cold winds came from the south/west?).

Naturally, when the weather is this balmy, one has no choice but to plant things.

For some reason, I got a bug to finally track down two of the particularly interesting plants from the gardens at Festival Hill in Winedale: 'Goldcrest,' the lemon-scented cypress, and dittany of Crete, a kind of fuzzy, silver-leafed oregano relative.

The company I ordered from (Mountain Valley Growers--check out the adorable 1950s typeface on their box!) has a minimum, so I rounded things out with a 'Pink Lemonade' thyme, a lemon bergamot mint (Mentha piperita cv citrata), and an Egyptian mint (Mentha niliaca--I don't actually remember ordering that one, but what the hell. Sounds fun and exotic.)

The cypress will be growing up the back corner of the house, in the mint/lemon balm/pink C. powellii bed.

But the most exciting thing we planted was the bathouse Matt gave me for Christmas. 

We (loosely) used the instructions put out by Bat Conservation International (based here in Austin, thank you very much!) to prep the box and mount it on a pole.

Per the bat folks, we bought a 16' "schedule-40 stainless steel pole with a 2" interior diameter (which I procured from the obliging folks at American Fence & Supply in Georgetown--who with much trouble--and some misgivings--fastened it to the top of my little Insight using 2 foam kayak mounting doohickies. They tied that sucker on tight, but the 30-min drive home on 130 was nerve-wracking all the same.)

The fence guy recommended the mounting hardware you see in the pic rather than the items in the PDF, so that's what we did.  We cut up a 2x6, screwed it to the bathouse using 2-inch #8 wood screws (careful to avoid penetrating the body of the house itself), and then attached it to the pole.

(As a side note, the fence guys also sold me a cap for the pole, which I think the bat folks should consider adding to their instructions).

Then Matt used post-hole diggers to dig a 3-foot deep hole--which, being Matt, took just about no time at all.  We raised it (definitely a 2-person job--you could really hurt yourself trying to do it alone), filled it halfway with dirt, tamped the dirt, applied a level, and filled it the rest of the way with a bag of kiwkrete.

Handsome, no?

 

A few notes:

• While the bat folks recommended a sort of medium-tan paint job for bathouses in our area, Austin bat forums all seem to agree that unpainted/unstained was better for hot climates.  So we are leaving ours as is.
• Some instructions recommend creating a 3'-diameter concrete pad around the base of the bathouse.  Since ours is in a bed (practically on top of 'Burgundy Iceberg'), we did not do this.  It's buried 3' down, though, so I'm not too worried.
•  Bathouses should be a minimum of 20' away from branches where birds of prey might lurk.  Ours is in one of the less-tree-infested spots in the yard, but even so I'm going to have to do some trimming stat (it needs to be ready before the bats return in the spring).
• The bat folks recommend 6-8 hours of direct sun, with morning sun being preferable.  As it is also possible for a bathouse to be too hot, I decided to err on the cooler side and install the house on an east-facing wall.  In the summer, I think it will get 6+ hours of sun, but I'm not perfectly confident about this--it might be more like 5-1/2.  But the west side of our house is just a horrible furnace in Jul-Aug-Sept, and the south is too tree-y.  
• A little way up the street there is a street light.  Instructions say the bathouse shouldn't be lit up at night.  I'm hoping the light is far enough away not to annoy, but close enough to offer a tempting all-night buffet.
• That window by the bat pole?  That's our bedroom window.  If we get bats, we'll be able to lie in bed at night with the lights off and watch them flitting about!
• Matt says not to be disappointed if no bats move in.  He's right, of course. It's a gamble.  But it would be so cool if they did.

Two Plant Sales

'Dawn Star' rose by Dr. Griffith Buck, plus a bonus 'Green Rose' bloom in front

I've been really, really awol.  No idea why, really--somehow, I just wasn't in the mood to blog anymore. For  about 5 months.

However, everything is so very nice out that failing to document feels vaguely criminal. Plus: two plant sales!

One of the nice things: a rose we got for free and never cared about, but that has been a real trooper.  And those wine-colored petals with white reverse are really outstanding. 'Burgundy Iceberg.' (I still think it's a stoopid name, though.)

The first was a series of releases by a propagator of rare and antique roses called Vintage Gardens in CA. They (if memory serves) collaborate with both the Huntington Garden and the rose garden in Sacramento. They have a huge inventory of source plants, but they rotate actual propagules in and out--it being too expensive to keep every variety in stock all the time.  Anyway, they had--I think--4 big releases this year at which they sold both rare old garden roses and a bunch of nifty found roses from the west coast.  My rose-growing experience has been very Texas- and ARE-centric, so I had never heard of many of these.

Unfortunately, they don't share my love of Chinas or Bourbons (too cool and moist in their area?), but they do have an extensive inventory of Teas. (And Centifolias and Gallicas, for those with the climate for it.)

To Matt's dismay, I ended up with 7 "bands" (which are extra-deep 4-inch pots, a common way to sell rose propagules):

• Rhodologue Jules Gravereaux
• E Veyrat Hermanos
• Red Smith's Parish
• Smith's Parish
• Rubens
• General Gallieni
• Baretta St Amber (one of those new-to-me found roses)

Miraculously, I found room for 5 of them; the other two will have to wait till we finish prepping the Great Wall bed between ourselves and our neighbor's property.

My next desires (but where will we put them?!?) are 'Oneto Home Saffron' and 'Korbel Canyon Red'.  Here's hoping for an early spring release.

Then it was time for the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center's fall sale.  Somehow, the theme of this sale (for me) ended up being Mistflowers. We've been trying to enhance the wildlife-friendliness of our yard, and a friend of Matt's calls mistflower "butterfly crack," so it was an obvious choice.  The only difficulty was that it turns out there are (at least) 3 different species of bluey-periwinklish mistflowers: Conoclinium greggii, C. betonicifolium, and C. coelestinum. I hate making decisions of this kind, so I bought them all.

The greggii was the only one I knew beforehand, but I think it is actually going to be my least favorite--it's a bit gangly, and the blue is comparatively washy. Meh.  The betony-leaf mistflower and the "blue" mistflower (coelestinum) appear much more satisfactory.  So far (after about 2 weeks in the ground!) they are very similar in color and habit--pleasantly moundy compared to the greggii.  And a lovely, deep glowy blue that really stands out toward dusk.  I haven't actually seen any butterflies around, but then the plants are just babies and it isn't really peak butterfly season anymore.  Am very much looking forward to next summer, though.

I also got:

• Whiteleaf mountainmint (Pycnanthemum albescens)
• Southern wood fern  (Thelypteris kunthii)
• Fall aster (Symphotrichum oblongifolium)
• Agave havardiana

Other than unchecked plant greed on my part, the principle news from the garden is that a number of this year's earlier plantings are doing quite well.

'White Cloud' is finally in bloom, and it is even more luminous than I remembered. The traditional pink Gulf Coast Muhly is all very well and good, but to my mind, 'White Cloud' is on a whole other level of numinous beauty.  The picture below sucks, but it's all I have on hand.

Pennisetum 'Black Moudry' in front; Muhlenbergia capillaris 'White Cloud' in back; Bouteloua 'Blonde Ambition' on right - colors a bit muted by dew

'Black Moudry' Pennisetum was a bit of a wild card for me--I had no idea what to expect, and it turned out to be a rather remarkable grass.  The habit is low, very symmetrical, and squatty, with bright leaves, so that it looks rather like a very green pincushion.  Or a doughnut.  Out of this doughnut bristle long, fat, stiff spikes in the most difficult-to-describe combination of colors--sort of like black mixed with purple and brown and aluminum.  Because that's the odd part--to me, the color looks curiously industrial, almost metallic (but not as shiny as the word "metallic" would suggest).  We'll need to move it--like pretty much everything else in the grass bed--but it really is dramatic and eye-catching.  Landscape architects must love it--that weirdly artificial and symmetrical form, those fascinatingly peculiar flower spikes.  It would be perfect in one of those industrial-chic gardens with containers made out of pipes and lots of rectangles and steel and concrete.  It doesn't really match the mood of the grass-n-roses bed, which is more naturalistic and nativey, but it's much too interesting to replace.

This isn't a picture of 'Cream Falls," but it does grow  in the same bed as 'Cream Falls' - unknown miniature yellow climber

'Cream Falls' Pennisetum--I really had no idea how interesting pennisetums have become these days.  'Cream Falls' is wide, fine-leaved, and amorphous, with very large, very fuzzy fat cream-colored caterpillar-shaped spikes, which it bears in heavy profusion.  It's a great grass to anchor a bed or to draw attention from far away, which is how I plan to use it in the G-n-R bed 2.0.  Right smack in the middle, where it can dominate and also breathe a bit.

You can sort of see Pennisetum 'Cream Falls' blooms in this picture--but mostly you're seeing 'Caldwell Pink' and an unknown climbing yellow miniature

Chandler's craglily (Echeandia chandleri)--I bought this interesting native lily at last year's LBJ sale, and it's put on a lot of growth in one year.  It has low-growing rosettes of stiff, pointed foliage and great, tall 3+-foot flower spikes of airy yellow flowers, vaguely reminiscent of gaura, only much taller, a pleasant gold color, and a slightly greater density of blooms.  It's blooming away cheerfully now (its 3rd week of blooms?), so it adds some interest at the end of the season, which is nice.

On the negative side, we yanked Mme Alfred Carriere.  I really hated her habit, which was to grow straight up, 4 or 5 feet above the roof of the gazebo, in a collection of stiff, off-center spikes that gave the gazebo the look of a 1980s haircut.

I gather these things are actually back in style now.  Sigh.

And she was a most reluctant bloomer, and was shading the dear little Ambridge Rose.  So she's gone to the great roserie in the sky.

Also negative: I'm reassessing 'Hot Cocoa'--when it blooms heavily (as it's doing now), I love the color, but the shape of the shrub has become too gangly and rigid for the G-n-R bed.  And Matt hates it relentlessly.  So we're going to transplant it to the spot where Ferdinand Pichard bit it.  If it lives, great; if not, well, I'll be sad, anyway.

Last bit of news: I just learned about two rose institutions here in Texas: the Chambersville Rose Garden, 5 acres of mostly antiques north of Dallas (planning for up to 22 acres in the future).  Tours are by appointment, but they also have an annual festival: http://greensourcedfw.org/articles/celebration-heritage-roses-fifth-annual-rosedango

Also north of Dallas, the town of Farmer's Branch has an annual rose festival: http://www.farmersbranch.info/play/coming-roses--they had Bill Welch, Gregg Lowry (of Vintage Gardens) and Greg Grant for speakers.

This year, the two festivals were Oct 20-21; we'll have to make a weekend pilgrimage next year.

Interestingly, this makes 3 centers of rose activity (that I know of) in Texas: Tyler (home to Chamblee's roses, the TX branch of David Austin, and a very large municipal rose garden), north Dallas, home to the two festivals above, and Independence/Texas A&M (home of the Antique Rose Emporium and the TAMU rose breeding program--including Ralph Moore's collection).  I wonder what others I don't know about?

'Dawn Star' rose in background; 'Green Rose' in front

Red Cascade

This spring's rains have been phenomenal for the garden--look how fat and lush and green everything is!

In particular, 'Red Cascade' has finally come into its own.  It bloomed a little bit after Peak Rose but wow, it was loaded.

Here's to you, 'Red Cascade'!

It takes a few years to establish in a semi-shady spot like this one, but in the end, it comes up beautifully.

Horticultourism: Festival Hill, Round Top

Two weekends ago, we visited one of my favorite gardens in Texas--Festival Hill at Round Top.

Cloister garden at Festival Hill, Round Top

I had been before, but years ago, before my Horticultural Awakening, and only had vague memories of strange and whimsical stonework. Then, late last year, Matt & I were in the area, and I said, "Hey, what about that Festival Hill?"

And it turned out to be wonderful.

Steps leading from the Cloister Garden to the Mediterranean Garden. This sort of lovely, idiosyncratic detail--differing levels, an arch, a column, a gratuitous curve--is totally characteristic of the structures at Festival Hill

Festival Hill is a music camp and (classical) concert venue occupying a number of large, antique buildings surrounded by woods.  The grounds are defined by local stonemason Jack Finke's stonework, which charmingly combines the refined and the rough-hewn and looks like what you might get if a poorer civilization constructed itself out of the wreckage of an older, wealthier civilization.  I love it--decadent, quirky, and very well suited to its location.  Mr Finke, sadly, passed away in 2010--his truncated blog notes that his children took over his role as groundskeeper at FH as he took on more stone work.  I hope they or someone else is able to carry on in his tradition there.

A nifty stairwell with a funky balcony sort-of-a-thing

And then the plants, the result of the combined efforts of Madalene Hill, the famous herb gardener, Lynn Lowrey, the eminent plant collector and promoter, and current garden director Henry Flowers, are so neat!  An unusual passionflower, a rare willow, a myrtle I'd never seen before, a citrus-scented cypress, a whole panoply of named lavender cultivars...

Lemon Cypress - Cupressus macrocarpa 'Golden Crest'

I got more inspiration and enlightenment from the small "Cloister Garden"--about 1,000 sqft, I guess--than from the entire rainforest pyramid in Galveston the week prior to that (I had a very nice visit with friends, but horticulturally, the pyramid was a bit of a shrug).

Cloister Garden at Festival Hill - a small homage to 'Souvenir de la Malmaison', it contains S de la M as well as its sports, 'Kronprinzessin Viktoria' and 'Souvenir de St Anne'.

Whereas look at this niftiness--you want it, don't you?  Someday, it shall be MINE.  It's a super-curly willow, possibly  Salix alba 'Curly Locks'.

Salix alba 'Curly Locks'?

Similarly, look at this beautifully robust lavender, Lavandula stoechas, possibly 'Otto Quast'? I've never had much luck with lavender, but look how sturdy and attractive this is.

Lavandula stoechas, possibly 'Otto Quast'

It was growing in a whole bed dedicated to myriad cultivars of lavender, oregano and other silver-leafed herbs.

Mediterranean Garden--Madalene Hill ascribed this garden's success to excellent drainage and a thick mulch of gravel.

In addition, the grounds include a "pharmacy garden," with all kinds of obscure medicinal plants from around the world. It's fortunate that photographs don't capture temperature--our first visit was at the height of the drought last fall, and the garden was blistering, dessicated, and muggy. 

Pharmacy Garden--looks pretty good for the worst drought in living memory.

But they still contained many blooming plants.  The grounds outside of the garden were in more dire shape.  Look at this lovely bridge--over empty air and crispy weeds.

I bet this bridge looks really lovely when you can't see its Sac-rete foundations...

The pond is really quite big, but as you can see, the entire thing had evaporated.  And the woods were full of dead trees.

The salty crust at the bottom of what was once a pond

The map below shows you the extent of the pond--and the grounds as a whole, for that matter.  I added some purple smudges where the gardens (that I know about) are.  Our most recent visit was impromptu, and I was wearing utterly inappropriate dress sandals, so we didn't get to explore much to check back in.

Festival Hill gardens map

We need to go back soon to see how the pharmacy garden looks when it gets moisture, whether any water has collected in the pond, and how the woods are doing.

Another of the delightful details that characterize this place--why build just another bridge when you could build a spitting god's head bridge?

Peak Rose, Baby!

On trellis: 'Fourth of July'; to the right of that: 'Cramoisi Superieur'; around the corner: 'Comtesse du Cayla'

It's officially Peak Rose!  Very nearly every rose in the garden is blooming like mad.  Yay!

'Fourth of July' is making a splashy showing on the big trellis, and the ox-eye daisies we planted in the middle of last summer's drought are blooming and providing filler (those that survived, that is.)

Left front: 'Kaiserin Friedrich'; at its base: 'Ferdinand Pichard'; magenta scraggly thing: 'Wild Blue Yonder'; peach in corner: 'Comtesse du Cayla'; shrub by trellis: 'Cramoisi Superiuer'; on trellis: 'Fourth of July'

The daisies and society garlic make a nice matrix to kind of glue this bed together.  It's a bit untidy, but we just call that "cottagey" and hope no one looks too closely.  We haven't really been able to keep on top of the weeds lately, either--they're delirious with rain.

At corner of house: 'Duchesse de Brabant'; speck of yellow next to that: 'Graham Thomas'; first big pink rangy thing: mystery cabbagey rose; rangy pink thing in front of trellis: possible "Maggie"; white behind the daisies: 'Souvenir de la Malmaison'; pink to the right of the daisies: 'Reine des Violettes'

The gazebo is half-smothered by roses, and the AC bed, which received many of the fruits of our trip to Tyler last year, is blooming up, starting with the indefatigable 'Belinda's Dream' and a baby 'Spice' that replaces one we lost back in 2007 to the Horrid Fungus.

By the pond, little 'Clothilde Soupert' has surprised and delighted us with the lavishness of her blooms.  She's had some balling, but she's got so many flowers that a little browning and balling here and there doesn't much matter.  CS reminds me of a bubble bath.

L to R: last of the 'Golden Dawn' narcissus, which had a surprisingly long bloom period, 'Clothilde Soupert', and 'Victoria Blue' salvia.

'Cramoisi Superieur' has always been one of my favorite roses, but for some reason, I have the devil of a time photographing it.  My camera just cannot cope with that particular shade of dark magenta-red. Still, I thought these blossoms were unusually and enjoyably prim in shape.  But the color just is not right.

And this is the first bloom (that I've captured) of 'Marchesa Boccella', which I received a year ago as a rooted cutting via the exchange on Helpmefind.  That pretty purple weed is clambering all over MB--I need to yank it out, but it actually looks quite attractive with the light pink of this blossom.

'Marchesa Boccella' with a rampant viney purple weed--a legume of some kind, I think.

And finally, Peak Rose coincides with Peak Poppy this year.  We've got an absolute forest of them in our Grass-n-Roses bed, some double,some single, some wildly fringed, but all the exact same shade of pink.