Gladiolus Passos - an update

Oh how I love Gladiolus, even though they are considered so uncool and old fashioned.  The association to an Australian transvestite comedian really doesn't help their street cred either.  But I don't care, I grow them proudly in the front garden in full view of the neighbours, all big and blousy and so unapologetic.

Last time I blogged about Gladiolus was a long time ago back in the summer, after a dig of epic proportions that should really have resulted in some kind of historical find of note considering how much sweat dripped from my weary body as I stood six inches down at the bottom of my trench.  However in the corns went and my last word on the subject was how testing they were being.  You may revisit that cheery post here.

A long time has passed since that day and Im pleased to say a few Gladiolus flowers have peppered themselves through that time.  After a long time believing that my dig was going to result in just bulgy biceps and not flowers, finally out they came.  Turns out they had just conspired with my Zinnias and Cosmos to start coming out while I was away on holiday.  Thats the kind of reward you get, all that love and tenderness and they stick two green, frondy fingers up at you.

The first one that came out was a Passos, but it didn't really look like I was expecting it too.  Nice, don't get me wrong, but somewhat different to the picture on the packaging.  That does infuriate me, when the picture looks nothing like the actual thing.  Maybe most people don't keep the packaging after planting and therefore can't compare, but clearly I have cluttered up the floor for months with it to enable this to happen.  Passos as per the packaging is a predominantly white flower with a dark purply blue centre, flecks of the same colour across the white and a splash of red in there too.  Very contrasty and eye catching.  Passos as per real life is a decidedly more purple creature, with a lot less white and considerably more red.  I don't actually have a problem with the way it looked, it was surprisingly dark and velvety, but its false advertising people, and it gets right up my nose.

It may have come out, but it wasn't exactly in the best of conditions.  It poured and poured and poured with rain just as the first buds were popping, and then they decided to pop no more.  On emergence the petals were brown, dry and crusty round the edges and looked a little weather worn.  The petals were also decidedly creased and in dire need of a good iron like a freshly hatched butterfly, which I can only imagine was because they took so long to come out.

I didn't get many Passos flowers come out, two stems in total actually I think which is hardly what I call inundated but as I love them so I treasured what I did get.  Snip and they were pride of place in a vase indoors to be admired, and admire I did.