Oh What A Beautiful Garden – Chicagoland

Last week was the first installment of ‘OhWhatA Wednesday’. Today is the second installment. This series may be short with winter coming, still, the intent will be to let you know what looks good in my yard each Wednesday.

I wrote a posting on Dahlias just a few days ago. You might want to look at those pictures as well to see why I am adamant that there is nothing else, let me repeat, nothing else, even in the competition this week. Yes, there are other plants doing nicely, but comparatively, the rest of the garden would be Michael Bolton on the dance floor. And if you saw Dancing with the Stars, you know he just didn’t measure up. Even Len would give the Dahlias a 10 if he saw them.

Let me try to explain. You may have seen Dahlias before, maybe even some of the dinner-plate size Dahlias, and thought that the grower must have performed magic to grow a flower that size. Or you’ve seen them as pictures on packages at the store, thinking that they wouldn’t grow like that for you. Let me assure you, in either case, the magic is in the Dahlia. It comes in many size, shapes, and colors, and it is a performer.

The Dahlia I’m holding at the Dahlia Club picnic is a hybrid from the garden of Steve Meggos.
Steve takes Dahlia growing to another level, not satisfied with making selections from the multitude of choices available. Steve basically makes new varieties of Dahlias and has started to sell them.

Dahlias come in different sizes as well, look at this little cutie.

Follow along with me, starting on February 14th, as Mike starts his Dahlias take the “7-month Valentines gift” trek from tuber to spectacular. For now, know that I took 4 vases full to work yesterday, and the Dahlia garden still looked great.

The rewards of growing Dahlias are huge…just like the size of the flowers!