Arthur in the Garden!

The bananas have been growing new leaves for some time now. The Basjoo are the most frost resistant and usually the 8 to 10 foot trunks do not freeze all the way to the ground. This means every few years they will reward you with the exotic looking blooms and small bananas by Fall.

The bananas are only about three or four inches long and with the thickness of a thumb. The flesh is full of tiny seeds and is very starchy and not worth the effort to eat. None the less, it is exciting when they do bloom.

This past winter there was one night where the temps were below 10f so I knew they would be damaged back to the roots with no expectation of blooms. Not even on the pink Veluntina bananas which usually bloom and fruit when they reach five feet tall in the fall.

In the spring I cut the trunks down until I found live tissue which was amazingly at about four feet from the ground. They have been slowly growing new leaves. Today I noticed what looks like a flag leaf on the largest trunk. A flag leaf is the leaf which appears just before a bloom stalk! It is rounder with a flag-like shape.

The Southern magnolias are blooming. too I am lucky to have a large and old tree between the house and garden sheds. They are so fragrant!

And my favorites of the hydrangea world- the very large oakleaf hydrangeas. A few of the flower corymbs or panicles are almost 18 inches long this season.

Nice. Very nice!