My insomnia comes and goes, but last week it kept me tossing and turning most of Sunday night. Why does my head always dwell on toe-curling fiascos and stupid mistakes I've made in the recent past on such nights? Why am I unable to come up with a few constructive ideas when I can't get off to dreamland? The only useful thought to reach my brain that night was the sudden realization that October was here and I'd forgotten to order any bulbs.
No gardener should let the fall slip by without planting a few bulbs so there will be something new and exciting to look forward come spring. What other plant can you plant that is more rewarding than a daffodil or a few crocuses? They go on and on forever, free of diseases, increasing in size and beauty each year? I suppose asparagus has comparative attributes, but I'm talking about flowers.
Plant a single narcissus and in a few years it has turned into two or three. In five years they can be dug up, separated and the results replanted. This endless cycle can be endlessly repeated, provided you've marked the clumps that need dividing before their foliage disappears. Then they can be easily located when it's time to dig them up come fall.
Do you know the difference between a narcissus, a daffodil and a jonquil? Not even the botanists do any more, using the terms indiscriminately. Narcissus is actually a genus of the amaryllis family and includes both jonquils and daffodils. Jonquils are a single species with rush-like leaves and sweet-smelling, short-cupped flowers in clusters. There are many species of daffodils, all hardy and having trumpet flowers like those found in the handsome white Mt. Hood variety.
Realizing that it was too late to order bulbs through a catalog, I spent the rest of my sleepless night deciding which bulbs I would buy at the local nursery and where I would plant them, a much more pleasant subject to occupy my mind than those horrible faux pas I'd been agonizing over.
I've acquired dozens of narcissi since moving to Locust Hill and have no need to buy more. My perennial border includes yellow trumpets and pale pink trumpets and many other varieties. I have some of the tiny tete-a-tete in the Alotta garden, a crowd of plain yellow daffodils up on the knoll, clusters of predominantly white narcissi in the upper sheep pasture, and a large circle under the walnut tree made up of at least nine or ten different species transplanted by dividing previous plantings.
As for crocuses, the ones I planted in the back lawn have all but vanished because the grass gets so tall so fast that I inevitably mow it and the crocus leaves down before they've had time to store sufficient food for the following year's flowers. It's best to plant these sweet little blooms somewhere else such as between the stones of a path or patio or under shrubs or evergreens. Crocuses are so easy to plant and so cheerful to see come April, one should always put in a few.
Tulips unfortunately don't last for years and years. Unlike narcissus bulbs, which are poisonous, tulips are safe to eat and field mice consider them a tasty treat. Many gardeners have the mistaken idea that moles are the culprits when they see tunnels bumping along under the soil and no tulips gracing the garden the following spring, but moles are carnivores. They're only interested in bugs. It's the vegetarian field mice who dine on tulip bulbs. They use the mole tunnels to get underground.
Because they rarely last for more than a season or two, even when planted with moth balls or buried in wire baskets, I stopped bothering to grow tulips many years ago as it didn't seem to be worth the effort for only a year or two of bloom. The one planting that turned out to be the exception was the tulips Bridget and I planted the fall before her wedding. That wedding was in the spring of 1987.
The following year I planted that area with pachysandra, not wanting to care for another flower bed. I guess both mice and moles just aren't interested in tunneling through a vast maze of pachysandra roots. The tulips in today's photograph are some of those planted for Bridget's wedding, still popping up each spring seventeen years later. I don't particularly want tulips in my pachysandra beds, but I did decide it was time to grow them again in the perennial border.
I bought 20 pink and 20 maroon tulip bulbs after my sleepless night. When I got home I took the bulbs, a bag of bone meal and my nurseryman's shovel and tackled the job of planting - 3 pink, 3 maroon, 3 pink, 3 maroon, etc. Every time I dug a large 6"deep hole and ran into a mess of daffodil bulbs (only three times) I removed them and set them aside.
When I'd finished planting the tulips, I took the daffodil bulbs and went over to an area of my daylily bed that needed them and planted them, then got a sharp knife and replaced dandelions and other weeds from between the flagstones on the terrace with the crocus bulbs I'd bought.
I slept really well that night.
