Fields of blue

Scilla siberica is a beautiful flower. It's one of my favorite spring flowers. Its deep blue color is just gorgeous against the dark green of the leaves. And I also love the way they have of spreading ... they grow from bulbs, but once you plant a few, they'll reproduce themselves quickly and spread fast. More and more every year. My friend Paz saw a picture I'd taken of some of them and mentioned how he might like to get some for his garden - please do :-) but beware, you may get more of them than you bargain for pretty soon. :-) It does look wonderful though, this time of year.

Yesterday was one of the twice-yearly meetings of the Norwegian Herpetological Society, of which I am a member ... we meet in the teachers' lounge at Grefsen high school (where our fearless leader works as a teacher) and to get there from Storo subway station you walk by some lovely old houses with gardens. Some of them had so many Scilla in them ... !! It was amazing, so beautiful. And among some of the blue there I also spotted another flower that I love - Gagea lutea, the Yellow Star-of-Bethlehem. They're called gullstjerne in Norwegian - 'goldstar'. I used to see so many of these when I was a child. Seems like they were much more common then. We used to have a whole bunch of places where we knew they grew. These days, the only place I know for sure that I can find them is the University Gardens. And not a lot of them there. I was really happy to see them yesterday. :-) So pretty. :-)