The last time I used this little blue and white bulb bowl from the Metropolitan Museum of Art was on Garden Bloggers Bloom Day in 2013. When I saw two small pots of about-to-bloom Muscari at the grocery store last week I couldn't resist. Blue Hyacinths and the similarly colored "grape hyacinths" will always come home with me when I see them.
I pulled the bulbs out of the dirt, washed them off and put them in the bowl. I was feeling very Dutch with this combination of flowers and container! I went looking for my other blue and white container with lots of openings in it. Turns out the blue and white brick is meant to hold flower stems and not bulbs. The bowl holds 5 bulbs, only half of the number I brought home.
Thus the others got plopped in a little cachepot from the late Johannsens Nursery, once a mere five minute drive from my house. This container is one of 5 that I bought one year at Easter along with a number of different succulent plants to put in them.
All of the flowers are sending up a second bloom. I put the one container right next to where I sit most evening so I can enjoy both the flowers and the fragrance up close.
As the flowers keep blooming it seems as though the bulbs are shrinking. One fell through the hole and had to rescued before it drowned. Maybe it's just that they're out in the air and not protected with soil. Or maybe it's just a fluke.
The bulb bowl has lots of small openings perhaps meant for baby bulbs; who knows. It did occur to me, however, that I should try putting big leafy flowers in the bulb openings and fill the small holes with the delicate stems of spring ephemerals. We'll see what I can do come spring when there's more in my garden than snow.