A Head Turner

I love to go to my local Japanese nurseries for, what I call "wow!" flowers - plants with blossoms that really knock my socks off.  These unique plants typically are expensive as was the case with the rare butterscotch colored rose I recently bought.  But this white dahlia is a good reminder that you don't have to spend a lot for an incredibly cool blossom.  A few months back I bought a bag of dahlia bulbs from Costco. The bag of 20 or so bulbs cost about ten bucks.  I had no idea how big they'd be, but I love all the different shapes and textures of dahlias - and so I went for it.

Some of the bulbs, as you can see, are enormous (10 inches in width) and just about everyone who visits my back yard heads to the gigantic dahlias for a closer look (including my son in the photo below!). Footnote: I'd buy these again, but would prefer a shorter version. It was quite laborious staking each plant, which was necessary as they'd start toppling over at 3 feet. Most, by the way, are four feet tall.