My spring roll is filled with different ingredients than one found in a Thai restaurant. A bromeliad leaf is wrapped around delicious contents from the garden. The names of some of the contents could be considered food – asparagus (fern), sage (salvia) – but I think we would be hard pressed to chew through the roll. It could possibly be considered high fiber/low carb for oh, say rodents or a passing iguana. My plan is to admire the flowers.
The ingredients:
My salvias are having a great year. Here they are again, Mystic Blue and White Flame. The pink flower is known as the tulip of the Treasure Coast. They don’t really remind me of tulips, but I get it. They are actually bromeliads, Billbergia pyramidalis. Green foliage is Asparagus fern and the wrapping leaf is from Blanchetiana Bromeliad (Aechmea blanchetiana). I love the green/mahogany coloration of the Blanchetiana leaves in winter, they are chartreuse in summer.
The weather here has finally turned in favor of gardening. My tomatoes are ripening and spring is in the air. On the down side, the moles ate all the bulbs and tubers, making me realize I should stop wasting money on these lovelies. I also accidentally grew some rabbit tobacco I thought was Chinese Forget Me Nots, oh well. Rabbit tobacco is a weed and a rite of passage in my youth. Boys would smoke it pretending like it was cigarettes! I am told it was harsh, but I never tried it.
Thanks to Cathy for hosting this weekly meme. Follow this link to see more vases.
The Shrub Queen 
I bought a blue salvia which I hope will look as lovely as yours, later in the summer.
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Tomatoes are ripening? Wow, that’s awesome. Your arrangement is a spicy one, I like it! tzgarden.blogspot.com
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Yes, I usually have them much earlier but it has been an overcast and rainy winter.
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What a lovely arrangement, I like the way the leaf curls round the vase, you are so ingenious. A great arrangement making the colours pop.
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Thank you, Someone!
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Even though we live in warm climates, plants know when spring has arrived. Do you salvias bloom in the summer? Mine will take a little rest in the hottest part.
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Yes, spring is a thing. The salvias flower year round but they slow down in summer, depending on rain.
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Clever title for this tasty concoction. 🙂 Now I’ll be craving Thai spring rolls for the rest of the day! 😉
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Thanks, Eliza. I hope you get some Thai food soon.
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Gotta make it happen! 😉
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This is stunning with the bromeliad in the middle…love your spring blooms in the tropics!
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Thank you.
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That bright pink Billbergia is impressive but I’m even more impressed by the ‘White Flame’ Salvia. I’ve yet to see that Salvia reappear in my garden even though ‘Mystic Spires’ has. Your Salvias do so well! Myabe mine are simply waiting out our still cold-ish temperatures (at least that’s my hope).
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Thanks, Kris. The salvia never disappeared, it just made smaller flowers over the summer.
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What a great idea to put a Bromeliad flower in a vase! It’s incredibly eye-catching, and the colours of the salvias blend beautifully with the bromeliad and fern. You are incredibly creative with your vases, Amelia!
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Thank you, I love the bromeliads, they last as cut flowers.
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That species of Asparagus was my first, before I was in kindergarten. Is self sows, although not enough to naturalize.
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I don’t think it makes Asparagus, this is a viney thing. My mother grew asparagus like that.
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Asparagus, as a vegetable, is merely undeveloped shoots. Technically, this species of Asparagus initially produces undeveloped shoots, but they are very thin and wiry, so would not be edible.
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It is actually kind of thorny and you have to wear gloves to handle it.
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Yes, as it matures.
When I was in school, we got ‘asparagus’ from the native Yucca whipplei. Their floral stalks look like humongous asparagus. Instead of cooking a bunch of asparagus, we would cook one of those. We sliced it into patties and peeled off the tough exterior. They were not very good.
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Love your ‘tulip’! This is a gorgeous creation Amelia – the ferns and the salvia form a lovely airy and soft ‘filling’ to your roll, and using the bromeliad leaf as a wrap is really eye-catching!
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Thank you, Cathy. It looks more like a torch ginger to me than a tulip!
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What a shame about your bulbs – it would be sad to make the decison to no longer grow bulbs, but there is sound sense in it… Love the theme of your vase today – so well though out! And a similarly well-performing salvia to Mystic Spires? No doubt we shall be seeing it in lots of your vases now!
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Thanks, Cathy. The varmints don’t eat Amaryllis and I do have a few. The White Flame is as good as Mystic Spires. I had a few other varieties and they did not do well. No idea why.
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Will look out for White Flame, which I suppose may not be available in the Uk
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Your vase is so beautifully lush, Amelia! I love the way the two leaves balance each other out. And the billbergia bloom is magnificent, but the tulip reference does stretch the imagination a bit, doesn’t it?!! 😉
Salvias here in southern Arizona are still in early spring mode; only my Salvia greggii varieties have any buds yet.
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Thank you, I love salvias and have to look for greggii to see if it will work here.
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Prettiest spring roll I ever saw 😁
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Thank you Annette.
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