Crying "Uncle"!"

Talk about surprises....I just looked at the 5-day forecast for NCW and it looks like we will have temps in the 80s every day this week! This is such a bonus this time of year, especially since many of our gardens have taken so long to bloom this year. Our summer really didn't start until late in June, with unseasonably cold temps throughout May. At the show on the 18th of September, many of our members lamented the lack of show-ready blooms and, in fact, I heard the same complaint from many growers in the Seattle area as well. Seems it was a late summer all over the state.....As long as October's killing frost holds off, we might have 3-4 more weeks for our flowers to open up! I'm sure hoping.......

(I'm sitting in the waiting room at Central Washington Hospital as I write this blog - my husband is having neck surgery.....keeping my mind off the anxiety as time crawls along) This morning, I checked out my promising yellow-red seedling, pretty tickled that it is growing as well as it is. There is a second bud getting ready to open, and it promises to be at least as big and the same colors as the first. There is a second seedling that has opened up, an open-centered one. It is a pretty shade of yellow, with hints of peach on the ends of the petals, and a little bit of a "collar" on the inside of the open yellow center. Not enough information to say if it is a collarette, or if it is just a mutated flower - again, time will tell.

I've been looking back at my posts of late, and find that weather is becoming a recurring theme. I've never thought of myself as a "weather person", although my husband and son are fascinated by the phenomena of temperatures, highs-lows, winds, rains and other such weathery things. In fact, when going through Dad's things following his death, I found that he kept logs detailing weather conditions as a routine part o his day. Now, going through the birth-pangs of emerging as a dahlia grower, I understand the significance of facts that prior to this, seemed to be somewhat mundane. In fact, if you look up the origins of the word "mundane", it can be a synonym for "earthly" or "of the earth." In fact, isn't that what growing dahlias does for us - connects us to the earth as we've not been connected before?

Lois Munro, a nurse here at the hospital, just stopped by to chat - about dahlias, of course! Lois is a long-time member of the NCW Dahlia Society, and while we were talking, we mentioned the transformation that becoming a dahlia grower works on our souls. When I mentioned that my daughter doesn't seem to have any interest in growing dahlias, Lois said "You never know....you never know when they are going to grab hold of you, and when they do, you're hooked!" And she is right - As a child, I never though I would be doing what I'm doing today in my garden. I've likened it to being grabbed by the throat, thrown to the ground, and not released until you say "Uncle!" I give up - UNCLE!;-)