
Dahlias are precious beyond description. Summer garden without dahlias is like - paraphrasing the words of Anthelme Brillat-Savarin- a beautiful women without an eye (the original words were about a dinner without soup). But there is no beauty without effort and dahlias require quite a lot of it. First of all, the famous and problematic tubers cannot be left in the garden for winter because they are very frost-sensitive. They must be dug out and stored in cool and dray place which is another nuisance. Than we must protect them from mice which do not mind the sweet taste of the tubers, just the opposite. Next, we have to secure a good site in the garden protected from strong winds, especially if we want to look after those tall cultivars with gigantic flower heads. We plant the tubers when the danger of spring frost spell is over, and we cannot forget about watering, supporting, controlling the diseases and so on. But it all means virtually nothing or even less than nothing the moment we see the magnificent flowers open and... we start to understand Empress Josephine or hatch a plot that might trigger emotional roller-coaster. With dahlias everything is excused!