February 2009. Well, this winter has brought me two new tazettas, surely as old as our house, but blocked from light for years. I don't know if they got rain at the right time or what, but this year I discovered I have both "Double Roman" tazettas and this mysterious bulb. For hte last five years it has just shot up leaves, so I assumed it was 'Grand Primo', which I have so much of around my property, but it finally decided to bloom this year and here it is, with its lovely pale yellow petals and bright orange cups....…

January 2009. I just discovered a lone flower stalk of this bulb blooming in a shady part of our garden along the driveway, at the foot of a pecan tree. This year, I've discovered two new naturalized bulbs along the driveway, which is the most neglected part of our garden, and was home to a huge 1930s-ish planting of Oxblood Lilys, Grand Primo tazettas, irises and crinums. I moved the crinums and irises to sunnier part of the garden, but I am still surprised by what blooms here. In five years I never saw this flower, but I guess conditions...…

Oooh, I love surprises. There have been so many of them in my garden, things I never planted, or remember planting, springing up out of nowhere. Our very long driveway is lined with a patchy, weedy mess that is slowly eroding away but at one point someone had gardened there.

Since writing my discoveries about bulbs a year and a half ago, I've learned so much more about growing bulbs. In spring and fall of the last year, I've gone on massive bulb-buying sprees, trying a few that I know will succeed here and then a few that are experiments. I think one of the reasons I've gone crazy with bulbs is that you get a lot for your money. Rather than having to buy potted plants or grow from seed, a box of bulbs can fill an awful lot of space inexpensively. If you want to dive into bulbs,...…

Most of my daffodil purchases are (hopefully) invested in bulbs that will return year after year, but with a few exceptions. The big-flowered, big-cupped kind don't usually come back year after year in Texas (either they need a longer winter to initiate their bloom, or they bloom too late at a point which it is too hot for them). Pouring over one of my cool bulb catalogs, I couldn't help myself from at least ordering a few of these to try with the others.I have to admit I was drawn to Billy Graham for its name; my husband took me...…

Mrs. R.O. Backhouse is a beautiful heirloom daffodil, introduced in 1921 to great astonishment as the first pink daffodil. (Which is funny sounding as I write it, I just love that the horticultural world is "astonished" by new flower developments. As if the flowers are divas.). There are all kinds of pink daffodils now, but from what I have read it is still difficult to count on them being a true pink but this would be as close as they come--a soft peachy pink. And like many daffodil blooms, it fades with age, and this fades to a lovely blush.I'm...…

Paperwhites are native to many parts of the Mediterranean. and are a type of narcissus closely related to the Tazettas, many of which are great for the South (Grand Primo, Chinese Sacred Lily, Erlicheer, and Avalanche are some that I grow). Like Tazettas, paperwhites bloom in little clusters of small white flowers, sometimes with yellowish cups but most of the time are all white. Most people grow Paperwhites indoors (you see a lot of them in stores around the holidays along with amaryllis) on rocks or in potting soil, let them bloom and throw them away.If you're zone 8 or...…

Unfortunately, I haven't had the pleasure of seeing this narcissus bloom yet, but I'm not giving up on it. (Note: more recent update below.) I read in a local garden blog that perhaps they need more cold than our winters provide. And yet a seemingly conflicting fact about them is that their native habitat is coastal and they are being sold as better narcissus for warmer, more coastal winters. Go figure. (I keep going back to what one local nursery owner said to me, "It's all a crapshoot, anyway.") Perhaps, like so many other bulbs, you might have the species...…

These are the cutest little flowers, not unlike 'Grand Primo', whose flowers spray out in more of a snowball shape, it can carry from 5 to 20 flowers from the top of each stem. Avalanche was once called "Seventeen Sisters" because of its frequent grouping of 17 flowers, but none of mine had even 10. Perhaps a few more years in the garden and I will see more. Avalanche's blossoms are just a little bit smaller than Grand Primo, but the cups are distinctly, well, cups, and are also a clear yellow, which makes them look more like miniature daffodils...…

This sweet little starry-eyed beauty disappeared nearly as soon as it appeared. Out of about 10 bulbs, this was the only bloom (as I write in February 2008). Campernelles are sweetly fragranced with dainty blossoms and wiry (often called rush-like) leaves. This is an easy way to tell many jonquils apart from modern daffodils or tazettas.Jonquils, at least the varieties technically called Jonquils and descended from that species, are a good choice for Texas. In my confusion about the various Divisions and names of daffodils, I wrote a Texas daffodil society, and a gardener kindly wrote me back a detailed...…

I couldn't quite capture the orange of the cups, but this daffodil is a very bright yellow with cups that darken toward the edges. In some photos I've seen, the cups look closer to red, but I'm beginning to think that many garden colors wash out in the Texas sun. (Some roses are lighter here than is often pictured.)This was one of my 'throwaway' daffodils; most of those I picked out had been mentioned in one place or another as doing well in Texas or the south, but this one was just a risk. (Not to mention I refrigerated it...…

I wish I could get an accurate photo of these beautiful blossoms but my camera always seems to want to make some yellows more yellow, or subtle yellows just wash away. Argh, digital cameras like to guess at things. Yes, yes, there's always Photoshop but that's another story.Anyhow, these are so beautiful and I was surprised when they began to bloom how much they looked like the tiniest roses, each small blossom packed with creamy white petals. They are called a double daffodil, and are descended from 'Grand Primo', a tazetta which is widely naturalized in Texas. They have a...…

This trumpet-cupped daffodil was first introduced in 1956, and as you would guess, is an "early" daffodil. Which makes for a good try here in Austin, as most of what keeps daffodils from doing well is either the lack of cold winter, or the very hot spring when most of the big trumpets and big cups bloom. It was the first of all the big daffodils to bloom in my garden, following shortly after the early jonquils and their pretty, fragrant flowers.These are big and yellow and bloomy and all that is classic daffodil....…

This lovely fragrant daffodil is a frequent site in old yards around Austin. When we first bought our house, these flowers surprised me by popping up in February in the oddest places around our house--nestled against our fence, along the driveway, places that have long been forgotten as potential 'planting zones'. Grand Primo is an old hybrid from the Narcissus tazetta species. (And calling it a daffodil might be confusing to some, who think of the smaller jonquils and tazettas as something different than the big-flowered, big-cupped modern types most often known as daffodils, but I call all the Narcissus...…