Friday, February 3, 2012

The primrose path

It's a happy sight when we first see racks of potted primroses for sale outside grocery stores. If you live in the East or Midwest this probably sounds early, and Colorado is buried in snow this morning. It is still possible to have February snow in Seattle, but it's usually just a quick, wet, event-- without the media hysteria. More importantly for us gardeners, the chances for a hard, dry freeze are fading. (Now that I've said that, it will probably go down to 15 degrees next week.)


I went over to Home Depot to buy a few primroses for the kitchen window box, and a pink Bromeliad jumped in the cart, along with a few other things.

That's the problem with spring plant shopping-- despite our resolutions to "scale it back this year" the temptation to overindulge is great. Our house is already packed with indoor plants and I'm not usually suckered in by tropicals like orchids and bromeliads. But this one was a bargain for $15 and came in a nice pot. I checked the tag and found out it traveled up I-5 to Seattle from Kent's Bromeliad Nursery outside San Diego. Kent's sounds like quite an operation-- a million square foot nursery dedicated just to growing 100 varieties of bromeliads. That would be something to see the next time we go to San Diego. John especially likes them, and apparently bromeliads are one of the best "clean air" plants for filtering unhealthy gases from indoor air. So there's always an excuse for buying another houseplant.

According to Kent, Aechmea Primera Fasciata-Spineless should bloom for 6-8 weeks.

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