What I Did on the Winter Solstice

In mid-December, while shopping for Christmas items at Lowes (a local big box home improvement store) I happened upon a cart full of fall bulbs.  Deep discount bulbs - no surprise given that the October planting season was far behind us. 

But I knew that that bulbs are remarkably resilient things, and that the ground was not yet frozen.  I bought up a bundle of them.  (Actually I had to constrain myself from buying the entire cart.  They were down to a dollar per package! It was horribly tempting.)

The bulbs were from Jackson and Perkins, and their packaging allowed me to see the condition of the bulbs.  I picked out the ones that were still sound, some with little green shoots poking out.  Happy with my crazy shopping luck, I brought them home and put them aside, fully intending to get them in the ground the next day. 

Didn't happen.  The bulbs sat for two weeks, waiting.  Meanwhile I ran around and tried to get ready for the holiday.  I did have the presence of mind to bring some large pots, a couple of buckets of dirt off one of my hold piles, and a few bags of packaged topsoil in to the unheated sunporch. 

It seemed then quite appropriate to plant them up on the longest night of the year. 

Here you see my dining room/library.  There are plants all over the place. Since the sunporch had been dipping down past the freeze mark, I had to bring in my overwintering plants.  You can see the two  parrot feather pots (Myriophyllum aquaticum) and the larger pot of 'annual' lobelia (Lobelia erinus 'Crystal Palace' - perennial in warmer climes, this one is.)

I'd like to say that the rest of the house doesn't usually look like this.   Heh. 
(There.  I've said it.  Does that make it true?)

Hoggle and Bailey, and the cats Luther and Fahfrd (Fahf's out of frame) were all fascinated by this entire process.  Dirt, on the floor!  And smells! Oh the smells! 

I had a lot of bulbs to plant.  This lot is of daffodils and jonquils:

The tulips (Apricot Beauty) are in there too, but the hyacinths (Gipsy Queen) I potted up separately.  (I abhor the smell of hyacinths - they get given away at the first opportunity, nasty things.)

I really packed them in the pot for the spring display.  I will have to figure out a way to mark the foliage so that when they are done, I can transplant them into a more permanent home in the lamp post border.  We'll see how that goes. 

The species tulips looked so lovely right out of the box.

Like candy, I thought.

 

 

 

 

They ought to be a welcome splash of color in the spring.  And maybe I will learn to let them self-sow.  I've been dead-heading my existing turkestanica, and consequently the show grows more meager every year. 

I also potted up a round of iris - reticulata and danfordiae, and a bunch of white windflowers (anemone blanda).  All of this, in pots, is going to brighten the dog's yard and the front porch until such time as they go into ground proper.

This potting up of the bright and sunny colors of spring seemed to be exactly the right thing to do during the long dark night of the solstice.  Planting as a prayer, as a active form of hope: all those little green sprouts poking out of their cold dark bulbs, just waiting for the sun's warm to leap forth and bloom upon the earth. 

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The plants I bought:
45 Iris Reticulata, Iris Danfordiae
30 Tulip botanicals
20 Narsissi tazetta Minnow
20 Anemone blanda White Splendor
5 Tulips single early Apricot Beauty
4 Daffodil Salome
12 Daffodil Cheerfullness
12 Daffodil jonquilla Marinette
(3 Hyacinth Gispy Queen)
(151 mixed bulbs for $10.00.  Not bad.)

Ought to be quite a show.

Comments

[bill]

What a great buy! And a nice way to commemorate the solstice.

[LizT]

So very jealous. Maybe this fall I will be able to save up enough to change my yard into the place I want to be. School has so destroyed my gardening time. I can not wait til spring!

[jenn]

Liz - We still need to find time to do those stepping stones.

I'v been looking for an excuse to buy an 'odjob' mixer for some time now...

And those hyacinths are yours, if you are interested!

[jenn]

Bill - I am such a bargain hound! The big plastic terracotta colored pot was another great deal. I bought two of them for $5/each a few years ago after the summer season.

The hardest part about the hunt for bargins is to not buy too much at full price, along with the bargains. Sort of defeats the fine purpose of the savings, at that point. I'm still working on this part!

[bogie]

That is quite the buy! Unfortunatetly, when I decide I want a plant or a bulb, I want to get it now (mainly so I do't forget about it later). So naturally, I miss bargains like that.