Pink Saturday - The Lovely Lotus, Part Two

Last week for Pink Saturday I wrote about the spunky little lotus, Momo Batan. This week I want to show you the majestic Mrs. Perry D. Slocum. In my imagination this lotus is an elegant grande dame in a pink ballroom gown!

Dr. Slocum was a pioneer in the hybridization of water lilies and lotus and named this exquisite lotus in tribute to his wife. It will grow to 6 feet tall with the blooms being held at least a foot above the pads. The pads on the plants we grew this year were up to 18 inches across with blooms nearly as big! People would see it in the nursery yard, pull over to ask what it was, then promptly buy it so that they could have one of the these giant beauties for their very own.

Mrs. Slocum is the only "changeable" lotus, its flowers are vivid pink on the first day, pale pink on the second, creamy yellow on the third and creamy white on the fourth! The picture above was taken of three blooms on the same lotus plant, and - being bog plants - they are also grown in a 7 gallon feed pan which can be placed anywhere in your garden!

We will begin anew with tubers in early spring, come join me in my obsession with the sacred lotus...

Be sure to visit Beverly at How Sweet The Sound for more delicious pinkness!

Accidental Tabletop Bog Garden

I am so overwhelmed and currently have too many things to do and absolutely no time to do them in. So I am going to ignore the madness and write a small post dedicated to my tabletop bog garden.

I keep this tub outside my backdoor on a table where I can contemplate its beauty. It is just so green, I just love that! What a blessing it has been - when I was too weak to walk outside I could look out the window at it and thank God for that little tub of greenery and for my life.

It was created when Hurricane Ike was barreling toward Galveston, and only 35 miles inland, our home. My husband put all my plants on the ground in our side yard, locked up and away from the windows. Some of these plants were bareroot, removed from a bog garden that I had in Arizona. I threw the bareroot plants into a 7 gallon feed tub and hoped for the best. I was in the middle of an intense round of radiation therapy and too weak and sick to worry about the plants. So, for the next few months I totally neglected this little tub other than to water it when I could, thinking that I would get around to dividing everything up into individual pots.

Obviously, that never happened and though I am healthy again I'm not going to touch this pot, it is just too cute! What a happy accident, no soil, no fertilizer, just water - no wonder I love these little wet wonders!!

The bog tub includes: Dwarf Cattail, Horsetail, Variegated Japanese Iris, Louisiana Iris 'Gamecock', White Rain Lily, Arrow Arum, Pennywort, Aquatic Four Leaf Clover. How fun!