My Hobby Got Out Of Hand
Dear readers,
I have to admit my hobby might have gotten a bit out of hand, which may make me seem a little bit strange at times, but to be honest, I like it like that. There are about one thousand different kinds of Daffodils on my hobby field, and I have collected them from all over the world, from growers I have met throughout my life. I can find fellow Daffodil enthusiasts in every corner of the world, we don’t even have to share a language to understand each other. And then I have a lot of my own seedlings as well. Truly a hobby that got out of hand.
The Daffodil and the Daffodil people. Which one is more important to a Daffodil enthusiast? You need them both, I think.
Daffodil bulbocodium Ballroom Belle
But to switch to a different subject, I had an injury this week. A brush cutting injury, to be precise. The muscles in my left leg were completely cramped up after I spent a couple of days brush cutting the trees and bushes around my house. I must have been too enthusiastic, but that is easy with things like this. You always see such immediate results that it is easy to spend all day cleaning up every bit of overgrown bushes and trees you can find. And since we are currently having daylight until like eleven at night, it is easy to lose track of time. Before I knew it I had spent hours doing the same movement without drinking enough, because like a lot of other places, The Netherlands is currently experiencing some very high temperatures. The next day I could not move that leg. I messaged Tinda, our family’s trusted massage therapist, who often knows how to work miracles when you mess up your back, but this time I had gone too far even for her. She told me it needed rest before she could work with the muscle, she would only hurt me if she tried to do it right away. Luckily, we are also friends, so we changed the plans to wine and cheese instead. Tinda also has a garden and showed me a tiny cucumber plant in a tiny pot, and she told me she hoped to get a cucumber harvest from it this year. I had to disappoint her by telling her I did not think this was going to work this year, that amount of soil does not have enough nutrients to grow multiple cucumbers no matter how much sunlight they are getting. We moved the cucumber plant to a larger pot where it has much more access to nutrient-rich soil. I am telling you this to get to a point, I promise. The point is that I am often surprised how little people know about the importance of soil for bulbs and plants. Not just the quality, but also the amount. The soil might just be the most important thing when it comes to the results of your plants and flowers. The biggest flower bulb of the best quality will not do well if you plant her in bad soil, and a medium, average (or even low) quality bulb might just do great if they are planted in the best kind of soil. Roots need access to nutrients in order to nourish the plant and flower, you cannot do professional sports on an empty stomach. Anyway, after moving the cucumber I stumbled back to my car. I hope no one saw Tinda helping me get in, because how my leg was looking wasn’t exactly great advertising for her massage practice.
Back to the Daffodils. Because of all those other Daffodil enthusiasts I told you about earlier, the Fluwel Special Narcissus Collection came to be. I got so many requests and inquiries about special varieties and where to get them, and now we can offer them ourselves. These varieties are only available in extremely small numbers. They are all rare varieties that are hard to find, and I want to remind everyone that this is the last week they will be available. July 5 is the last day to order them.
Until next week,
Carlos
