Today’s challenge–can I write an entire post in half an hour? That’s just about how much time I can afford to spend on it today. Seems doable; six quick, random topics, right?
Let’s start with some African violets today. Last fall, I purchased ‘Ma’s Jamaica Farewell’ from a mail order company. I was very pleased to receive a very healthy, albeit small plant. Happily, it has bloomed twice for me!
The best advice I can offer for growing African violets is to always water from the bottom and give them bright, but indirect light. Mine do well in an east facing window where they receive sun from sunrise until about 9:00 AM.
In March, I wrote about my unhappiness with my Dracaena marginata ‘Tricolor’. Many of the leaves had fallen off its trunk, and the cat had nibbled at some of the top leaves. I decided to try to propagate new plants, so I cut the stalk into pieces, stuck them in dirt, and sealed them in plastic bag greenhouses. Two months later, neither of the stalk sections has rooted, and one has become moldy. However, the original stalk has sprouted three new shoots! One of my complaints about the original plant was that it was merely a single stalk, so I’m happy that I’ll now have a branching Dragontree!
I also planted tomato seeds in March, and I’m the proud mother of several large tomato plants. They’ve lived under lights on a heat mat in the basement until this week. Now I keep them in a window that gets afternoon sun, and I’ll start hardening them off by taking them outside for increasing amounts of time over the next two to three weeks before it’s finally warm enough to plant them in the garden! These are ‘San Marzano’ and ‘Brandywine’. I also have five ‘Sweetie’ cherry tomato plants.
Outside, rhubarb season has begun! This is but a small patch, but it gives us just what we need, especially if I keep it picked. A friend gave me a division of her rhubarb when we moved to this house, eighteen years ago. I try to put a shovel full of manure on it once or twice a year, but some years I forget.
One of my new daffodil purchases last year was Narcissus ‘Garden Opera’, which, since my daughter and I are big opera fans, I chose admittedly for its name. It is a jonquil and boasts three flowers on most of its stems. It stands about a foot high, and its bright yellow flowers average two inches wide. Its corona is slightly darker, with an orange tint, than the perianth. It has a very light, unremarkable scent.
We’ll end with a tulip. This is ‘Hocus Pocus’, a statuesque, single late tulip. It stands between twenty-four and twenty-eight inches high and its slender, lily-like blooms are roughly five inches tall. It is bright yellow with narrow red flames.
So, the answer is no, I cannot write a post in under half an hour. If you’re keeping score, this one took thirty-nine minutes! Thank you to The Propagator for hosting this weekly meme! Check out his blog and the others linked to it to see what’s happening this week in gardens around the world!
Cosmos and Cleome 
I am about to harvest my first rhubarb of the season as well. A bag of manure every spring keeps rhubarb happy!
Suddenly spring! I’ve fallen in love with your African violet. I have a couple of specialty ones with lovely foliage and tiny flowers; yours must be something similar. I struggled with African violets (killed too many to admit to) until I discovered self watering planters at a local nursery about five years ago. Alas, their supply has been disrupted due to the present situation so I have one more waiting on them to come back into stock. Alana ramblinwitham
Rhubarb is rad! It is nice to see it in other gardens. It is uncommon here, so I get the impression that it is uncommon everywhere.
Gorgeous tulips especially the combination of yellow and red in the last photo.
What a beauty your Hocus Pocus daffodil is and I love its name.
One of the things my family always brought away from visits to my grandmother in Salinas, CA (with incredible agricultural soil) was loads of rhubarb stalks! My mother made the best pies. Not too sweet. Never with strawberries. I’d be the only one to eat it, so don’t grow it now.