Pruning a Japanese Anise

Yesterday I chopped on my Japanese anise bush ( Illicium anisatum) which after all these years had suddenly taken to drooping it's limbs to the ground and had rooted there. It had formed a sizable circumference and was overtaking some early spring wildflowers that were growing at it's feet.  I thought of it as a mother hen squatting over her charges, except in this case mother hen was actually smothering her charges. I knew there was a Hepatica under there and I found it blooming bright white just in the edge of the  encroaching anise. I also found a cyclamen in the depths of that that foliage. I do not remember if I planted it there or if it reseeded there, but it is liberated now. After twenty plus years, I wonder why this shrub suddenly decided to do this in the last few years. But that is the beauty of gardening. You never know in any year what new thing will develop, what plant will begin to march beyond it's customary place, what new plant will come in unbidden or depart for reasons unknown. Weather is one of the causes of change in the garden, and all I can do is watch and try to cope with the aftermath. There must be a life message there somewhere.

Fragrant Cyclamen

Here are 2 cyclamen I bought from Wally World back in January (or was it December?).

I set them in the window behind the sink where they could get light and also be cooler at night. A number of times in the evening while I was working at or around the sink, I got a whiff of a delicious fragrance, sort of lemony. At times I had several different orchids in the window and tried to pinpoint the fragrance to one of them. At last when the orchid flowers had passed and the plants were sent back to the greenhouse and the cyclamen were the only blooming thing left in the window, I still could smell the fragrance. But it was not both Cyclamen. It was only one of them. The solid dark pink one had no fragrance at all. But the variegated light pink one was sending out a fragrance to charm some evening pollinator. The fragrance was much stronger in the evenings. No pollinator came for it, as far as I know, although some seed has been set. But I got the benefit of its efforts.Check out the leaf differences, too.

January Orchids

This yellow and bronze orchid is Odontocidium 'Pacific Sun Spots'. This is the first bloom for me and I hope in the future it will have more flowers on the bloom stalk. I cannot let January and February go by without getting  a cyclamen, which is sitting here beside the 'Pacific Sun Spots'. I love cyclamens, for both their unusual slicked back flowers and their beautiful leaves.

I believe this is also an interspecific orchid; in other words, they are crosses between two orchid genera. However, I do not have the name of this one anymore, if I ever did. It is big and beautiful and very crimson.