Wild Flowers

I am neither artristic nor creative, but still when the mood come, I try to create something special, but the outcome is normally a sad product of what I want them to be :D

Here is some proof of what I tried to create :

Wild flowers

 

 

What I actually tried to imitate :D

 

Fresh flowers from the shop

White, blue and pink

 

 Aren't they pretty?

Those from the flower shop I mean :D

Jumping Jacks and Jane

While trying to locate pictures of spring flowers and tulips yesterday, I came across these pictures taken in the first week of April 2012, the only evidence of tulips blooming this year.

The quality of the tulips was not very good compared to last year due to a number of reasons, I think :

- I did not cut the flowers and let the leaves be, a process that gives nutrients to the bulbs for the next season.

- I did not dug out the bulbs and keep them in dry place and replant them in the ground come November.

- Frost, snow and freezing weather in February caused the newly sprouted leaves to turn brown.



Still, I enjoy looking at the pictures no matter what, especially the joy on the faces of the children :D

:D

Spring and Tulips

Spring came and gone, but somehow I did not manage to capture the beauty that came with it. No doubt it must be the most gloomest and wettest Spring that I had ever encountered since I was here a few years back. Our tulips in the garden had already flowered and now wilted among the wild grass and bushes that grow wildly in its place. Where were my other spring flowers? Where was I all these time??? Sadly to say, I did not take many pictures this time around. But here is some pictures to remind me of Spring 2012. Hopefully this bright beautiful tulips will enlighten the hearts of some of you outhere, as it did mine.

Purple, red, yellow, orange and white - all from the garden

Ohhh there is a pink one as well !!

Another vase of tulips

 



Zoetermeer In Spring

It had been a wonderful weekend recently, the temperature was 25 celcius on Saturday !! Why... it's not spring, it's summer !!! I went out that Saturday wearing a jumper, a shirt and a light wool jacket. In our haste, I did not check the temperature... I know it was sunny but I did not expect it to be so warm. Halfway through to the train station, we had to take off our jackets. By the time we came back from the swimming, it became even warmer. Ilham had taken off his spring jacket and his sweatshirt, leaving only a T-shirt and I was sweating inside, wishing I could take of my jumper as well !!! But by today, the temperature has gone back down to 13 celcius. Alhamdulillah... I'm worried you see. If it's too hot, my tulips will not last that long..... :D

So, before it gets too warm, I better post here this beautiful narcissus.....

Narcissus are everywhere now. This picture above was taken outside the swimming pool in Zoetermeer on the 19th March. I couldn't help it, I just had to ask Ilham to be my victim...

Mat bunga...

We took a walk from the pool towards Dorpstraat, the medieval village. I wanted to see whether there were any crocusus left....

Crocus with the old church at the background.

The crocusus were still there but they are not in their prime anymore. I was a bit dissappointed not to find any narcissus though....

Then, we walked to the Centrum West station using another route. Here, we found more old Dutch houses.

We also found this big bird....

Tried to get a closer and better picture, but off it flew away.........

See it's reflection in the canal.

This kind of bird is very common here in the Netherlands. Once, when we were in Amsterdam, while walking to school, I saw this bird. It was standing so still I thought it was a statue... but I was sure I had not seen any statue before at that place. The wonderful thing is they are wild birds.....

Spring Flowers

There are a few flowers that have bloomed around our house. Since I do not recognise the plants, I have been watching what type of flowers they will bloom. They turn out to be hyacinths, narcissus and a few that I still do not know the names.

This unique blue flower plants (above) catch my attention. They are low and small plants. I must find out the name... So, the minute I have free time, I quickly downloaded the picture. Once I enlarged the photo, it looks like this....



It turns out to be grape hyacinths !!! No wonder I like it !!! I love hyacinths very much, their fragrance is very much soothing to me... The enlarged photo looks very much familiar though... No wonder, I have seen it in Komichan's blog !!! Further checks on the internet reveals that it is also called muscari and baby's-breath.

I wonder what this is....

It turns out to be blue hyacinths

I have a feeling this is white hyacinth

There are many colours of hyacinths, you can go olalaa... looking at them, unfortunately I do not have them. And then, there are narcissuss.....

Narcissus

I learned a lot yesterday.... I was sure that the yellow flowers that I have in the garden were mostly narcissus, and maybe one or two daffodils. It turns out that narcissus and daffodils are the same !!! Narcissus is the Latin/botanical name, whereas daffodil is the common English name!! All the while I thought they were two different flowers, the smaller ones (above) being narcissus and the bigger ones (below) being daffodils.



It seems that there are many versions of narcissus/daffodils. Some are pale yellow, others have orange "trumpets", some are white with yellow "trumpets" etc...

Pale yellow

Smaller flowers

The ones outside the house, by the canal are pale yellow with orange trumpet...

By the canal

And then, there those that I do not know the names...

Unnamed blue flower

Another blue flower

Rose like flowers....

Up close

Funny looking tree...

And the flowers up close...

Such lovely flowers..... Subhanallah

My First Tulip

This blog shall be a gardening blog for a little while.... I couldn't help it. The weather is so lovely now and we have lots of spring flowers crop up which I have no idea of their names. And I do want to write about them, but by the time I do it they are all "old and basi" stuff. Time is of the essence, and I do not seem to have them nowadays....

My knee was getting better in the last couple of weeks, so I presumed there were no side effects from the fall, but yesterday I had difficulties walking... the muscles in the calf and thigh were stiff and I started to feel backache from the uneven walking. But today, it seems better, alhamdulillah. But I really need to have it massaged, that's what people are advising me....

Let's get back to my spring flowers and in particular, to my tulips. To my surprise, one of the tulip varieties have started to bloom 10 days ago.... isn't that wonderful !!! The funny thing is the leaves are only a few inches long. I wondered whether the bulb was planted too deep in the soil. I checked, but it was not, so it must be the shorter variety afterall.

My first bloom - picture taken on 14th March

It's only as high as a crocus !!!

The second one is coming out... :D

Finding two blooms in one day was a heady experience.... but I had a nice surprise too.

A white crocus !!!

A single white crocus had appeared not far from the first tulip. Looking from afar, I thought it was a tulip....

Pure white - It has only 3 leaves

By now 4 more tulips of the same variety have bloomed. The mini keukenhof that I dream of might be a bit far-fetched and ridiculous though :D For one thing, between one tulip to another, there are space, and then I thought, more leaves will come out and the long leaves will help to cover the soil and space in between... just like the clumps of tulips that I found in the garden before, but it does not happen that way :D

Oh well.... there are still time. Somebody told me that these tulips will flower in April. Let us wait and see.... Ohhh.. by the way Keukenhof is officially opened today :D

Tulpen

While searching for the crocus the other day, I was delighted to find two clumps of "tulpen" at two different locations in the garden. They must have been planted there by the previous occupants of the house. In case anyone is wondering, tulpen in dutch means tulips. To my surprise they looked much bigger, greener and healthier than our grown ones !!!

I wonder what colour they will be.....

We had planted about 800 of tulip bulbs towards the end of November last year. It was our second attempt in the Netherlands, with the first attempt almost a complete failure due to ignorance and sheer stupidity :D You might want to read the story of that never to forget experience here :D Being a dreamer that I am, of course I am hoping that our tulips will grow into a Mini Keukenhof, where naturally all the Bollywood stars wannabe could have a chance to practice their sexy little zumba dance :D

It seems to be a difficult beginning for my dear tulips. Two days after the bulbs were planted, it snowed !!! For the first time in the year !!! Can you imagine that... in November !!! And it was rather a heavy snow !!! I worried the condition of our bulbs, the soil had yet to settle around them and the snow might somehow damage the precious bulbs. Sometime in early February, to my horror I found a dear blogger Ravishing In Red who was currently staying somewhere in UK, had posted an entry showing her tulip and it was already a few inches high !! Mine had yet to show their first leaf !!!

But finally, they show up :D

The soil looks a bit dry... maybe that's why they are slow in coming out hmmm...

Another section, with different type of tulips. The leaves are striped, maybe the flowers will have stripes too...

Up close

I like this one :D

All of the above pictures were taken on 11th of March. Some leaves had opened up and yet others were still tightly closed.... They seem to be a longggg way from flowering. I wonder how the tulips at Keukenhof are doing. It's been a wonderful beginning for spring, sunny and not windy and not too cold. I hope it remains that way and I sure hope my tulpen will turn out allright.

:D