Purple Allium Explosion

Dear Chicago House,

It will be the third summer I have tended your garden and I am at last seeing the results of my labors.Your garden had great bones when we moved in with a lot of boxwood and yew hedges, and while they are a pain to clip, they do give the garden great structure. However there was an almost complete lack of any color from perennials (apart from a single patch of peonies – see how I split these up and propagated them around the garden)

But things are looking quite different now. This week there has been an allium explosion.

I’d actually forgotten I’d planted these as I mixed them up with tulip bulbs I planted in the fall. My tulips are gone but the same bed is now filled with these beauties

They are a spectacular bloom and I felt compeled to lie down on my front lawn so I could shoot them from below against a fantastic blue Chicago sky. I am sure my neighbors think “that English lady in the brick house is a little odd”. No harm in giving them a little fuel.