They Are In

Before you know it, they are in. What do I mean by that? Well, the two flower beds you’re looking at here are our Daffodil cradles, from our Daffodil Nursery. You’re probably thinking: I’m just looking at a picture of some sand over here, who feels happy about that? But don’t worry, I already have Daffodil in bloom this year. 

 A Daffodil that blooms in Autumn, does that even exist? Yes, it does. There are Daffodils that bloom in Autumn. This one does not have a name yet, I only have a few bulbs of her at the moment. She is a seedling from the Narcissus viridiflorus. That is a totally unique kind of Daffodil that grows green flowers in Autumn.  Narcissus viridiflorus 

A small flower, but they do often have more than one bulb on a stem. There are a few places in the south of Spain, where they grow naturally throughout Autumn. It’s a fun and unique Daffodil, but hard to find: the flowers are so green that in order to see her, you have to get down on your knees to get a good look. But she’s been on my wishlist for a long time, I would love to add this one to our collection.  But that’s probably where I go wrong… I want too much. This is the string that contains all the varieties Karel planted when I was in England. That was a bit of a bizarre experience: I was driving around over there, happily visiting friends all over the country, and when I got home the Daffodils were planted. I’ve been present for that process my whole life, and now it was already done when I came back from my trip. A fantastic feeling. The one thing left over were the nursery-cradle flower beds: I had to plant the smallest varieties by hand. But I like that chore: you can spend full days by yourself, outside in the sand, and plant all those tiny varieties. The string containing all those newborn varieties was a little bit longer than this one with the larger parties, so you can probably guess what the future holds. I have way too many of them, but still… there’s also a wishlist.  We aren’t the only ones spending our days planting. The whole road on which we live is busy with it. This egret has been living in our neighbourhood for a few years now, she’s looking very surprised at the sudden change of scenery. She probably has no idea how land that was fully green yesterday is now this.  Another day later, and she’s back at the same spot but with yet another view: the straw has gone onto the planted bulbs to provide them with a nice duvet for the upcoming winter. In no time, the entire horizon between Burgervlotbrug and Julianadorp changes into one large patch of straw.  I took this photo a couple of years ago. You’ve seen it before if you’ve been reading the newsletter for that long, but I didn’t feel like going up in the windmill to take a new one. You’d just see basically the same thing. And what I like about this picture is that in the bottom left, you can see Neighbour Ruud’s tractor. He is filling the last grey patch with a blanket of straw.  If you were wondering what I am doing now that I’ve finished planting, don’t worry: there were still some things left to do. The Amaryllises still needed to be planted in their pots. Every year, I put two bulbs of every variety in pots to check their quality and to see if every variety is what it says on the label.  444 pots this year, with over 150 different varieties. Marika and I have had a nice time making sure everything was done. We know how insane this number of varieties is, but there is some good news to share: This time, it wasn’t my fault! Sure, I love Amaryllises, but the culprit of this abundance is none other than Vlad. He loves Amaryllises the way I love my Daffodils. One time before he had moved to The Netherlands I visited him in Berlin, where he lived in a modest, small-ish house. Not too small, it was very cozy, and there was enough room for me to stay with him, but when I went into the bathroom I was absolutely overwhelmed to see no less than–I counted–forty-two pots of Amaryllises in the windowsill, on the sink, on the edge of the bathtub, on the floor… literally everywhere. A true Amaryllis addict.

The next task will probably be planting Peonies. We still have a free patch of land in front of our solar panels. The last couple of years, that has been filled with Dahlias. A few of them are still in bloom, too: we haven’t had any frost yet, and it is simply remarkable how long Dahlias can keep producing flowers when she feels good. But back to the Peonies: I feel like Daffodils and Peonies will probably go together very well. I want to plant them together: 10 Daffodils, 2 Peonies, 10 Daffodils, and so on. I want to be able to see every variety we will be selling in the Fluwel web shop for myself there. I hope they will keep coming back year after year, and show us how well they can return to your garden without you having to do anything about it. 

A fun task to look forward to. I might tell you more about it next week. Now, I’m going back outside. 

Kind regards, 

Carlos van der Veek