At this time, there are no Yorkton and District Horticultural Society meetings scheduled yet, but visit us at www.yorktonhort.ca to keep up with what鈥檚 happening! We recently had our AGM on Zoom; now that is a historical 鈥渇irst鈥� for the group! That鈥檚 quite a journey from the first flower show in 1907, to giving prizes of flour and sugar to winning flower show entries in the 1940鈥檚, to having our Flower Show online, and now having our AGM online as well! As Great-Grammie always said, you never stop learning, and our group is certainly doing its best to learn and change with the times! Thank you to John, our great webmaster, who set everything up for the AGM and guided us, and to everyone who bravely took part, even if we weren鈥檛 sure how to do so! You鈥檙e all great sports and fearless gardeners!
At this time of year, we are always eager to try growing bulbs in the house, to bring a burst of blooms in the coming darkest part of winter. You may have seen 鈥減aperwhite鈥� bulbs in the stores. Paperwhites are actually narcissus papyraceus, a beautiful and fragrant flower that originally called the Mediterranean home. Narcissus got their name from Greek mythology. Once upon a time, there was an amazingly handsome young man named Narcissus. Though he had no trouble with the girls falling in love with him, he never fell in love with anyone in return until one fateful day. He was dazzled and swept off his feet鈥� when he saw his own reflection in a pool of water! No doubt he knelt there, turning his head this way and that, admiring himself. But he was so smitten with his reflection that he stayed there, gazing at himself, not eating or drinking, until he finally died. Legend has it that his beautiful dead body turned into the flowers we know as narcissus.
Cousins of daffodils, narcissus is easy to grow indoors from bulbs. They do not have to be chilled ahead of time, we just have to plant them in the container provided, and in about four weeks we鈥檒l have the beautiful delicate paperwhite flowers gracing our homes. If we keep them out of direct sunlight, with more filtered light, the blooms will last longer. They grow fairly tall (to about eighteen inches), with clusters of white flowers at the top of each stem, and long, narrow leaves. If we want to be sure that they don鈥檛 start flopping over we can add a slim bamboo stake at the edge of the pot and tie them gently.聽 They don鈥檛 mind cooler temperatures, but we should keep them away from drafts.
They would make a very pretty and elegant tabletop vignette with the container set in the middle of sprays of spruce branches and pinecones and silver Christmas balls.
The only thing to remember is that they are very fragrant. Very fragrant! If your nose is sensitive to too much fragrance, you might want to choose another kind of bulb, unless you can put them in a far corner where you can still see them but only get wafts of them from a distance. You may find them too much of a good thing. It鈥檚 amazing how some beautiful flowers like certain lilies, hyacinths, and paperwhites have a double or triple dose of fragrance.
I remember an event that we attended once, and there were bouquets of star-gazer lilies on display. They were breathtaking to look at but my goodness, the scent was absolutely overpowering, and not in a good way!
So you can decide about paperwhites, but you certainly won鈥檛 be disappointed by the floral show they present!
Thank you to our friends at Yorkton This Week for their wonderful work. Let鈥檚 pray for health for all and brighter times ahead. Have a great week!
