blog

This post is from from my other blog here

Ordinarily, one would think that autumn is the ideal time to plant things because the heat and drought break and we get some nice, hospitable, cool, moist weather to ease the strain on a root system until the long sleep of winter. Or the short snoozes of winter, as is more often the case.Needless to say, only one of those conditions holds this year.Nonetheless, we keep buying plants because (a) that's what we do, and (b) I keep assuming that--any minute now--the autumn rains will be on their way. There's only a month of autumn left, so those rains better get hopping.Our latest exercise in optimism was the purchase of a couple of '4th of July' roses to go on the trellis we just erected in the rose bed. They are the richest, most gorgeous shade of vermillion, with pale pinky-white streaks--very decadent. But that the same time they're only semi-double, so they have an informal, breezy, cheery quality to them. So they're on the edge. They either remind you of the silk lining of a vampire's cloak or they remind you of a picnic blanket, depending on your mood and which particular blossom you're looking at.Giant picture of '4th of July,' pinched from http://www.rosewallpapers.com/jun_09-fourth-of-july.htm.In addition to the roses we picked up at ARE the weekend of Pete's wedding, that makes 6 new roses this fall. Plus Matt brought home a 'Mademoiselle Franziska Krueger' that we put in the Pole Bed. So, 7. Which means that we currently have a total of 43 roses in our yard. It ain't Josephine's garden at Malmaison, but even so, that's a lot of roses.The elusive Mlle. Franziska K. This is the only picture of her I could find, and it's not very representative. (http://lacroix.maui.net/userimages//5/5550594d2515.jpg)And we're not done yet. One of these days, we'll be adding a 'Ballerina,' a green monster rose, a 'Fortune's Double Yellow,' and dear 'Madame Joseph Schwartz' (a long-time favorite of mine), as well as a short hedge of 'Archduke Charles.' And then we may be done, but I doubt it.So what is it about roses, anyway? Why do we have nearly one rose for every hundredth of an acre in our yard? I think it's a combination of variability, intensity of color, availability, personal history with the genus, and adaptability. There aren't many genera that have so many named cultivars that are so readily available. There are hundreds of rhododendrons and lilacs and peonies, but we can't grow them here. There are probably hundreds of hibiscus, but a only relatively small subset of them is reliably available. There are hundreds of crinum, but they are hard to find and expensive. There are thousands of orchids, but they are much too prissy.It's actually really easy to be a rose fancier--there are lots of nurseries that sell moderns and a good number propagating antiques. And antiques do very well here--they're a great choice for lazy and/or xeriscapic gardeners. And of course, Matt & I used to work at, and in fact, met at ARE, so we've got a personal connection that way. And because there is so much variability, the roses have their own personalities--different habits, susceptibility to diseases, thorniness, glossiness, darkness, floriferousness, &c. The longer you grow them, the more you get to know their personalities, the more of a relationship you have with them. You don't have a relationship with, say, Indian hawthornes or crape myrtles, however nice your crape myrtles may be. Roses, you start calling by nicknames: "Madame Jo," and "Graham," and "the Duchesse," and "Miz RM." Probably because there is a relative unchangeability to Indian hawthornes (they either have scale or are about to get it) and even to crape myrtles, which bloom, change color, and drop their leaves fairly reliabily.Roses, on the other hand, keep you guessing, especially the "remontant" roses, which tend to bloom in the spring and fall. Sometimes they seem to have two flushes of bloom in the spring. Sometimes their fall bloom is really early. Sometimes it's late. Sometimes they throw out a flower or two between bloom times just to tease. Some roses are more intensely pink in early spring or in cooler weather in the fall. In August, some of them bleach to nearly white. Sometimes their blooms are large; in stress, they'll be smaller. Sometimes the petals are smooth and regular; in drought, they'll ruch up; in humidity, some of them ball up (I'm looking at you, Clotilde Soupert). So your garden is full of surprise pleasures--plants reaching their peak or suddenly outdoing themselves, plants retiring due to cold or heat or season, plants putting on an unusally perfect bloom, plants putting on a freakishly misshapen one, plants reaching a new intensity of color or introducing an unexpected variation. There is always something to discover.And then, too, roses are kind of like Shakespeare. So many people have loved them for so long that all those generations of affection and endeavor and stories embue the plants with extra layers of meaning. How many stories do you know about particular cultivars of pansies or boxwood or redtip? I don't know any. But there are any number of stories about the origins or discoveries of different cultivars and classes of roses. So I suppose roses are a logical plant of choice for a bookworm--they're plants with character development, rising action, climax, and denoument. (And maybe this is the core reason Matt & I dislike 'Knockout' so much. They never change--there's no story.)In other, lesser plant news, we're also looking for a Cordia boissieri for the SE corner of the house, where we currently have an aged and rather crapped-out ligustrum, a chitalpa for the SW corner of the house, and a bay laurel for the front corner of the rose bed.Because any day now it's going to rain, and then it'll be perfect weather for transplants.Malmaison(http://www.gutenberg.org/files/25842/25842-h/25842-h.htm)

This post is from from my other blog here

Yesterday, the wunderground gave us an 80% chance of rain in the afternoon and a 70% chance of rain in the evening.How much rain do you think we actually got? Go on, guess.NO RAIN AT ALL.Stupid weatherpeople.They've been doing this to us all year--promising us thunderstorms and heavy showers with blithe confidence: 60%, 70%, 80%. And we get a big, fat nothing.You may think, Sheesh woman, so they made a mistake or two. Let it go. Allow me to show you why I'm so hung up on this issue.This is a chart of average annual rainfalls around the world and of Elgin's rainfall for this year as of 11 Nov. Note the usual rainfalls of our nearest sister cities. Houston gets a lush 50 inches. Dallas, "the City that Works: Diverse, Vibrant and Progressive," (they paid someone for that slogan? Why not just say "the city of pin-headed corporate drones" and be done with it?) gets a comfortable 33.7 inches. San Antonio, to the southwest, gets 28.So far, Elgin has 17.4 inches of rain this year. And that's measured at a weather station on the other--wetter--side of Elgin (I kid you not. They get rain when we have blaring sunshine. Austin has had just over 10 inches this year, and I suspect our little patch of Elgin is more in line with them.)But let's be conservative. Let's go with 17.4". How bad is 17.4"? Look a little to the left on the chart. That's less rain than Casablanca. Casablanca--town of which Claude Rains remarked "The waters? What waters? Casablanca is in the desert"--gets 18 inches per year.Our next closest rain buddy in my unscientific study is Windhoek, Namibia. Windhoek gets a paltry 14.7 inches of rain per year, "which," the internet helpfully tells us, "is too low to support crops or gardens."Park outside of Windhoek, NamibiaTo be fair, the ultimate winner of this depressing game of Our Weather Sucks Worse Than Yours is Cairo, a city whose annual rainfall is so low, it couldn't be represented on the chart above. Poor Cairo gets a thirst-mocking 1 inch of water per year. Which is why there's no landscaping around those pyramids.Undeterred, wunderground.com gives us a 70% chance of rain today and a 60% chance tonight.As I write, the sky is blue with some fluffy, white clouds.Bastards.

This post is from from my other blog here

We were out of town last weekend, taking a long weekend in Comfort, Texas. However, now we're back, and the tide of home renovation rolls on.This week Matt finished the trellis. Here he is, wielding a post-hole digger with typical self-assurance and efficacy (I did a little, too, but Matt's definitely better at this sort of thing than me).Matt digs holes for planting the trellisThen we jimmied with it to get it level.Matt jimmies with the trellisAnd there you are. In this picture, it's just leaning in the holes; this evening, though, Matt cemented it in, so it's all nice and straight. But this is the best picture we've got. Sorry about that.Ta da! Our mighty trellisI think it turned out really, really well. We're going to grow 4th of July roses on it and hopefully get a little privacy for the west side of the house. A woman should be able to eat breakfast in her PJs in her own yard. That's what I think. Hopefully, now I can do so without shocking the neighbors.We also need to plant a bay laurel and a Magnolia x soulangiana to finish the bones of the rose garden--they will both mitigate the lumpishness of the rose garden (which is sort of shapeless and lost looking) and provide a some screening.

This post is from from my other blog here

You may recall (or possibly not) that our house had, inexplicably, two breaker boxes: the main one in the mudroom and an ancillary breaker box in the crawlspace that was only reachable by wriggling all the way under the house. Not only is that (a) stupid and annoying and (b) unsafe, but (c) the box didn't even work, which meant that the pond, greenhouses, and sundry indoor outlets also didn't work.So, subsidized by the New Job, we hired an electrician to sort this out, install a ceiling fan on the porch, and add some exterior outlets. Oh, and put in a front doorbell. The fan turned out great, and the exterior outlets are both exterior, and outlets, which I think is all one can ask. The front doorbell... I bought it cheap(ish) from a Home Depot that's closing, and I didn't get to hear what it sounds like before buying. But the description was all Deluxe, so what could go wrong? I mean, the thing plays something like 65 different sounds. Yeah.Only after the electrician installed the thing did we discover that it has this awful electronic sound--like a ringtone from 2001. On top of that, every one of its 65 sounds is utterly inappropriate, from "Feliz Navidad" to "Dixie." We've basically installed the doorbell version of the Walmart Singing Fish. And on top of that, no matter which sound we set it on, the ridiculous thing always defaults to "Take Me Out to the Ballgame." Two less sporty people than Matt & me you could never hope to find, so this is especially cringe-inducing.Matt & I were out of town this weekend for his brother Pete's wedding. Pete & Christi were married in an old church in Chappell Hill, which had a lovely ambiance. Matt's posting his pictures from the wedding (url to be added later). I got to spend some time with Ladonna's sister, Denise, and her best friend, Lucy, both of whom were absolutely delightful people.Then on Sunday we stopped at the Antique Rose Emporium on the way out of town (where Matt & I used to work and, in fact, first met). The gardens are more expansive and mature than ever, which is nice, though they've rearranged the roses in a way that is more user-friendly to the average buyer, but is a little less precise, from the perspective of the dedicated rose fancier. We picked up 4 roses ('Climbing Cecile Brunner', 'Climbing Old Blush,' and 'Mme Alfred Carriere' for the gazebo; 'Souvenir de la Malmaison' because it's a gorgeous old thing), a deep purply curcuma called 'Raspberry Ginger,' and the crinum 'Claude Davis.'Souvenir de la MalmaisonGlad to be home, though. Weddings can be a bit exhausting for an introvert like me.Now that, uh, the check's cleared on the electrical work, we can turn our attention back to the trellis.We put the antique fence pieces the Ks gave us as a house-warming present on top and the hog/goat/whatever-wire that came with the house as the bottom panels.The trellis, in all its (half-completed) gloryThe hardest part so far has been sawing through the wire and doing the math to figure out how everything fits together. You can see that the wire fencing is quite thick. We used up three reciprocating saw blades on this project--wore them down to completely toothless smoothness.Wire fencing--very, very hard to cut, even with a reciprocating sawDefunct reciprocating saw blade--click image to see full size.We had to use 2 x 6s because the antique panels are wider than the hog/goat/whatever-wire panels--the wider frame compensates for the difference.And we're sticking the whole thing together with these metal flange/bracket thingies (sorry to be so vague--no idea what their proper name is). You can see Matt screwing one on below.Matt screws on the brackety-flangesWe've got one side done, and will hopefully finish the rest soon. Compared to all the tiresome sawing and multiplying and adding we had to do on this project, screwing in metal flange-brackets is really pretty speedy.Last item: 'Ducher,' the only white China rose, has started blooming. It's the nicest, softest sort of lemon-chiffon-white color (not, frankly, well-represented by the picture below, but I'm too tired to try to photoshop it into shape).'Ducher' rose.

This post is from from my other blog here

Exxon on 290, just east of ElginYup. Today I paid less than 3 dollars for a gallon of gas. Takes just a little bit of the sting out of the whole Great Depression: The Sequel thing we've got going on.Other updates: (1) We finally got some rain on Tuesday. It was only 4/10" but it was good to know that water still falls out of the sky sometimes. (2) We gave Izzy her first bath. She didn't much care for it. Poor little skinny kitty. (3) They finally moved Mt. Albert II last week, although the road that they presumably put it on looks about the same. Mt. A. II had been there since August--I think communities of woolly marmots and lichen had started to move in. (4) We finally tried the red taco stand on far east Main St (Dos Amigos)--they make a damn fine smoky chicken fajita taco. (5) After a year in the ground, 'Buff Beauty' finally put on its first--kinda funny-looking--bloom.Buff Beauty's first bloom. When it gets its act together, it'll climb up the gazebo.We're lovin the cooler temps. Aside from being hopelessly dry (that little rain doesn't seem to have accomplished much), the weather's been consistently beautiful. A little warm in the afternoons, but clear, cool mornings and evenings. It occurs to me that we haven't been grilling nearly enough, which seems ungrateful of us.We finally took our inaugural bike ride in Elgin this morning. One of those things we've been meaning to do (for a year and a half) but hadn't quite gotten around to. It was very nice--we biked to HEB, which is pretty exciting for this suburbanite. I've never really lived in a place where the non-hard-core could bike to run errands. That was one of the original attractions of Elgin (well, that and really cheap real estate), and now that it's October and all mellow and gorgeous, there's no reason not to.Biking in the towny part of Elgin (10th St to Ave C, Ave C to 11th) was just fine. The streets are wide enough and the traffic slow & infrequent enough that there were no problems at all. And we got to admire people's Oxblood lilies and yard bling.But crossing Hwy 290, on the other hand, was a bit nerve-wracking. Lots of fast-moving traffic, lots of people impatient to turn left, and my hand-me-down bike is about 2 inches too tall for me, which makes stopping and starting an ungraceful and often painful process. Next time we may take the long way around via Central Ave., which goes under the highway.Other possible bike destinations: the Seed & Feed General Store on Dildy St. (yes, "Dildy." It was named in a more innocent time), the dry cleaners at the intersection of Main & 290, the organic grocery downtown, the ice cream shop downtown (if it's still in business. sigh...), Bloomers nursery at Ave F & FM95, the park on 12th, the gas station at Taylor and Main, and possibly the hardware store, though biking on FM95 is probably not the safest thing a person could do.Izzy, trying to recover her dignity after the trauma of a bath. She was not happy with us.

This post is from from my other blog here

We finally finished it! We've been working on it since February, and we finally got it done.Ta-DA!Completed porch glider in its new home by the patioThe rotten, rusty original came with the house, and we replaced the slats, the metal brackets, and all the hardware and painted everything. It's now go stainless steel bolts, red oak slats, and brackets made from hurricane fence pipes. It glides beautifully, it's wonderfully sturdy--it's altogether satisfactory.And when we finished, we sat on our porch glider in the mellow, breezy, golden afternoon and just chilled. Exactly as I had planned.View from our shade patioMatt did most of the final work on the swing (I did help with the hacksaw, though. Sawing through fence pipe--not fun work). Meanwhile, with my trusty cultivator hoe--I love that thing--I slowly, carefully chipped the large mound of hard-backed earth from the buttress part of the cottonwood. Our tree guy was adamant that we needed to pull that soil back and let those buttress roots get air.In the picture below, you can see the bit I had fully excavated on the right and the partially excavated side on the left. I think I gingerly dug off about 8 inches of soil.And now I remember why I decided not to become an archeologist.Partially excavated cottonwood At the same time as all the swing/tree excitement was going on, one of our Oxblood lilies was blooming pink. I know that a pink subspecies or variety exists, but why didn't we see these last year? Do we have the true pink, or is it just some response to drought stress? Pretty, though, isn't it?Pink Rhodophiala bifida (Oxblood lily)And here are some picture of the cats. They are still pretty wary of each other (Po keeps getting in Izzy's personal bubble. Izzy doesn't like this. At all.) but no blood has been shed. And we only let them mingle under supervision. On the good news side of things, Izzy adapted to her litter box right away.Po, whose gargantuan paws are twice the size of Izzy's.Po's GlamourShot (TM)Izzy, who sometimes looks shockingly sarcastic for such a young little kitty (1 to 1-1/2 yrs)The Great DictatorMatt and Izzy

This post is from from my other blog here

New sofa! (and ottoman)Well. Today certainly has been full of excitement.The long-anticipated sofa (with ottoman) finally arrived. It's very big and very comfy (if you like your sofas firm, which we do). I'm having some slight regrets about the lovely cotton velveteen espresso-colored upholstery we chose. At the time, it seemed charmingly decadent, but it would also appear to be a fuzz magnet. And Po's striped hairs show up beautifully on that dark brown. I guess we'll have to keep some lint rollers handy and wield them often.We'll test the sleeper this weekend. The old one had a pretty decent mattress, for a sofa bed. We'll see what this one's like after several hours.Next on the list of new things, Matt's work had this spare gas grill that they wanted, somewhat inexplicably, to get rid of. Well, we give used appliances a happy home here at Chez M, so he loaded that sucker up and carted it off. It's much larger and less rickety than our other second-hand gas grill, so that's nice. If anyone wants the older old one, let me know--otherwise it'll be hitting the freecycle.And finally, most dramatically, we acquired a new cat.This was rather a big step for us, as I only became a somewhat reluctant cat owner last year, and, since, moreover, our catspace is not big and is currently full of Po, who is large, and contains multitudes.However.She'd been hanging around the yard begging handouts for some weeks, and she's such a sweet little kitty with a Little Tramp moustache and the most plaintive meow ever. And, furthermore, there's some sort of cat disease going around Manchaca (deep south Austin, for you out-of-towners. Pronounced "man-chaack"--the last "a" is silent, for some reason.) We couldn't continue feeding her and petting her if there was a risk of passing something on to Po. But at the same time, we didn't want to abandon her to whatever-the-germ-is. She's very affectionate--if skittish--and so very skinny. We named her Isadora, which seemed like a good name for a wee skinny little cat with dainty paws. But she almost immediately became "Izzy."We snagged her Sunday night and put her in the garage till we could take her to the vet, but our garage (French for "decrepit old shack") turned out to be anything but hermetic, and Izzy--who loathes confinement, we have discovered--escaped. To our surprise, she came around again last night (we grilled--Izzy positively cannot resist the smell of a cookout) and was gullible enough to come within snatching distance. We nabbed her again, this time putting her in a great big crate (the kind you put Rottweilers in). She mewed piteously, and we had to keep reminding ourselves that it was for her own good in the long run.Today we took her in to the vet. They confirmed that she wasn't microchipped and hadn't been fixed, so between those facts and the absence of a collar and her general skinniness, we assume she's a bona fide stray. The vet gave her a clean bill of health (apparently, her ears are "gorgeous" from a veterinary perspective) except that the feline leukemia virus test came back indeterminate. We're to come back in months for further testing. Fortunately, Po's had his shots and boosters, so he should be okay. The vet also recommended feeding them separately and keeping them physically separated until they've had time to get used to each other.Izzy: the new kitty on the new sofaShe's now curled up (shedding white hairs) on the new sofa, apparently happy as a clam. She's been assigned temporary sleeping quarters in the master bath while she and Po acclimate to one another. Tonight we'll discover whether or not she has an intuitive understanding of the litter box. She does seem to have grokked on to the come command, though she's not always terribly motivated to actually respond to it. (We've been training Po over the months--he's a wayward kitty, and it relieves my feelings to see him obey me in at least some things. He does come and sit beautifully. He does stay and go when he's not feeling naughty. And he does jump, down, and stand, but these are newer acquisitions to his vocabulary, and he's a little hesitant about them.)

This post is from from my other blog here

We evicted the old sofa today (and added some scratches to our bamboo floor, sadly. It opted not to go gently into that good night). It was an 8-foot-long sleeper, and it weighed a ton. Two moves ago, as our moving guys struggled to maneuver the thing up a set of apartment stairs, my well-used old sofa--the cradle of my infancy (and my childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, come to think of it) was disrespectfully referred to as a "motherfucker." We managed to heave the old thing out the front door without a single curse, but that's probably because all our breath was being used to grunt. The Final Egress of the SofaWe somehow wrangled the beast into Matt's trailer. He'll be taking it to his folks' property at Dale. Two's going down, but ain't but one's coming back. I believe it will be a gory scene of dismemberment and immolation.We're gonna take a little ride...The new hotness is supposed to arrive this Tuesday. Farewell old sofa.

This post is from from my other blog here

Rotten old guttersWe've started on the gutter project (we thought the swing project and the trellis project needed company). We had initially planned to hire someone else for the gutters. I thought, being all mature but willing to make sacrifices to do the responsible thing, "It's probably going to be expensive. It could cost as much as $750. But we're just going to have to save our pennies and do it." So when the first estimate came in at $1,200, it was something of a blow. When the second guy told us he could do it for a mere $3,000 (just a reminder: we do not live in the Taj Mahal. We live in a 1300-square-foot farmhouse. And it's a 2-story house, so it's not even a full 1300 square feet worth of roof) we realized a different approach--a more personal approach--was needed.Rusty old guttersThe first step was to pull the old gutters off. As we have only the one ladder, and as Matt, to speak frankly, doesn't really trust me in matters where balance and dexterity are required, he climbed up and pulled the gutters off while I picked up the pins and spacers when the fell on the ground.Matt testing the fascia. This'll have to go.The next step is to rip off the rotten fascia and replace them. This will entail more painting, of course. I wish I could feel that the massive amount of painting I've done has developed my painterly skills set, but every time I get in the shower and see the squidgy, blobby line where the red wall paint meets the white ceiling paint, I taste futility.Anyway, once the fascia's done, we'll buy & hang the new gutters.Interesting aside: our house wasn't originally stone--it was an old wooden farmhouse. When Matt was up on the roof, he got to see the original house where the fascade ends.Stone facade & original wood exteriorMeanwhile, just after I discussed lycoris in the context of oxblood lilies last week, our garden produced a lycoris. I have no idea where it came from--I don't remember it from last year, but I can't imagine I would have bought and planted a solitary bulb like this. In any event, here it is, gamely if inexplicably blooming in the front bed. Wonderfully explosive, isn't it?Volunteer Lycoris radiata in the front bedLycoris radiata closeupAnd finally, here are a couple of Crinum macowanii seedlings from the seeds I bought on ebay earlier this summer. They've been rather slow to germinate and then to grow, but they're starting to put on a little size. We'll be putting some in our shade garden--not sure what I'll do with the rest.Crinum macowanii seedlings

This post is from from my other blog here

A clump of oxblood lilies (Rhodophiala bifida) growing on the shady side of the houseIt's in the upper seventies, there's a very nice breeze, and the sky is blue--it's glorious weather. So I'm blogging from the front porch again. Still more oxblood lilies have popped up since yesterday, looking ever so lovely.So let's ponder the oxblood.The Oxblood in ContextOxblood lilies look rather like slimmed down "Dutch" (South American) amaryllis because they are all members of the same family, the amaryllidaceae. So, like many other amaryllids, they are bulbs and they have six-petaled trumpet-shaped flowers and long, strap-like leaves. They also closely resemble the true (South African) amaryllis, Amaryllis belladonna, which, like the oxblood, blooms before its leaves emerge. Belladonna lilies, however, are pink, and have thicker stems and slightly larger flowers. They're also a bit like some Cyrtanthus, an extremely varied South African genus that's not terribly common here in the US.And they're probably most frequently confused with red spider lilies, Lycoris radiata. From a distance, they're both leafless, red, slim-petaled, and about the same height. However, spider lilies have thinner petals with wavy margins and, most importantly, long, spidery (hence the name) stamens that extend well beyond the flower and curl upwards.The Oxblood in the LandscapeOxblood lilies are members of the American genus Rhodophiala. Here in the US, we grow Rhodophiala bifida, but in Mexico and South America they have a treasure trove of different species. My favorite pictures of exotic Rhodophiala are by a guy named Hüdepohl. For example, see the golden Rhodophiala bagnoldii in a rather breathtaking desert landscape. Check out his unnamed pink amaryllid in a field of what appear to be bright indigo morning glory flowers. And I particularly love the Rhodophiala phycelloides, bright red on a vivid blue background. The dude knows how to take pictures.Our little O. bifida looks comparatively modest, but it has its own virtues. In the old days (which old days? I don't know--those old ones) people planted oxblood lilies along their foundations, along sidewalks, and along fences and property lines. So rugged are they, that they will survive indefinitely on old abandoned homesteads, outlining buildings that have long since disappeared. (While I'm not sure that it's the best use of these plants, in Texas, oxblood lilies have a very linear identity. Our ninety-year-old neighbor, for example, has a big, fat double row of oxbloods along his fence line.)I think clumping them near the front of a bed for little exclamation points of seasonal color is probably a better way to incorporate them into your landscape. We're puddling ours around a wee little bur oak, so hopefully we'll have a big pool of crimson some day. Admittedly, we're not there yet.The beginnings of our colony of oxblood liliesOxbloods can take full sun, they (obviously) withstand drought, and they can handle at least some shade. Their bloom is brief, like most flower bulbs, but they're very dependable. And that deep crimson is so punchy.Oxblood buds by the shade patioDistinctive FeaturesOxblood bulbs easy to recognize because they are sheathed in distinctive shiny, black, papery coverings ("tunics").If I'm not mistaken, they've got something called "retractile roots," which are roots that first grow deep into the soil, then telescope in on themselves, pulling the bulb in after them. This is why you must be prepared to dig very, very deep if you plan to transplant a clump.If you want oxbloods, though (and of course you do; who wouldn't?), transplanting is the way to go. They are only intermittently and unpredictably available in the nursery industry, and you often pay through the nose for the priviledge--rather like that other garden exellency, the crinum lily. The Antique Rose Emporium sometimes has them, and so, I believe, does the Southern Bulb Company, which uses a picture of oxblood bulbs for the rather stylish banner of their blog. We got lucky--our old farmhouse came well-stocked with venerable old plantings of the lovely things.Closeup of an oxblood lily