Luckygal, it's just pure luck with me, you should have seen the mess I used to make when making an arrangement for one of our garden club parlour shows. It's more monkey see monkey do with me LOL. Flora, couldn't you amend your soil to suit one, mine might not be in chalky soil but competes with the roots of a Robinia tree and without any special care I might add. I first saw Cardiocrinums in the University of B.C.'s botanical garden, several of us were over for their first mother's day plant sale. I spotted one in a gallon pot and snapped it up, it was a bit pricey I thought ($18) but at that time this was the only place you would see never mind buy one. It took two more years before that first one I bought bloomed, it was well worth the wait though, it's perfume filled my garden with it's lovely scent making me not want to go in at night. I didn't feel to bad about that $18 when a few years later a nursery where I bought most of my must have plants from introduced them as new on the market and were asking $100 for a small bulb. Now you can buy small bulbs for less than $10. For those who are not familiar cardiocrinums, it takes 7 or so years from seed to bloom and then it dies but not before producing offsets, these offsets take 3 or 4 years before they will bloom. I now have two varieties, here's a picture of the foliage so even when you are waiting for it to bloom the foliage is attractive. Annette

Thank you so much. Kate, I like to take full bush shots too, but I'm having a difficult time getting pictures I'm happy with. Dublin Bay is looking good this year, the blooms are larger and have more petals too.

Thank you, Krista. I'm very much looking forwards to seeing more mature blooms of this rose, which will hopefully look more like what I've seen in pictures. Still, I got quite a thrill when I saw this pretty little bloom. boncrow, I would say 3-4 years and it's still growing. I'm now having to prune it a bit so it doesn't encroach on the other roses or look out of balance in relation to the smaller ones. I bought two more SdlM specimens exactly one year ago and the bigger one is about 2 1/2 feet tall and slightly wider. It has many buds on it. The second one, which is in a shadier spot is only about 18 inches across and 20 inches tall and has no buds. I fertilized some of the roses yesterday and I hope the little one will begin to grow a bit faster.

In your second-last picture above, Sans2014, can you PLEASE tell me the name of the red-streaked plant on the far right of the picture???? I fell for one of those yesterday and passed it up because I did not recognize the name, but since I have thought of going back to get it. It is beautiful. What is it?????