Just spent most of the day planting literally hundreds of bulbs - I love setting them in the soil, tucking them into their bed to dream of their color next spring or summer. I never get tired of the rich scent of newly-dug dirt. I've loaded the two beds at the school with scads of bulbs, one is mostly crocuses and small pastels to go with them (over 100 of them to poke through the creeping thyme - going to be fun in the spring), the other is a raised bed like an irregular teardrop shape, so I planted the tips with snowdrops, winter aconite and crocuses, put anenomes, a white puschikinia with sky-blue stripes, blue scilla and muscari along the sides and did concentric circles in towards the middle, digging one trench at a time and filling it up with bulbs and a sprinkling of good slow-release bulb food. Dwarf variegated grape iris, miniature tulips in two colors, autumn crocuses in two colors, tall peach tulips in the center along with fuschia hyacinths, ixia, more muscari, colchicum, chionodoxa and some others I can't even remember now. I'll have to take some pictures when they come up, so I can move things around if they don't look right next to one another. Went home and planted a bed of parrot fringed tulips, two sets of pink daffodils, yet more muscari (wow, I have a lot of those) and a jumbo cream-colored autumn colchicum bulb to go with my pink ones. I still have a sack of double-daffodils and a sack of large crocuses to plunk in someplace this weekend. Whew! Here's to spring after winter! Most of these were chosen deliberately because they have little greenery to have to wait and wait for it to die back so it should stay neat looking without too much effort, and they are all fall/early spring/late spring bloomers - very little here for summer because school is out and hardly anyone is there to see it then. The leaves for the dwarf iris stay around forever, but they are a pretty variegated stripe and form a short fan so they still look nice, fuctioning more like an ornamental grass might. I'll have to take some pictures in the spring, if all goes well. What are your favorites to plant? Are there any others that you might recommend as low-maintenance and low in the 'ugly dying leaves' factor?
Oh gosh, you were really having a great time with all those bulbs .Spring will really be beautiful around you.Will be waiting on those pictures.
I spent a good part of this afternoon dividing and moving my Iris...I have gorgeous purple bearded Iris and some white and yellow other Iris, I don't remember if they are Dutch or Japanese. I now have three beds of my purple beauties and one of the others. Also had to move the Day Lilies to a sunnier spot. I still have Glads to replant. Got some of them dug up and in a pot of dirt, as soon as the Hibiscus by the back fence goes dormant and I can cut back the limbs I am going to replant the Glads behind them along the fence. A couple of weeks ago I got two dozen Daffodils in the ground. It has been years since I have planted those. I did find some Hyacinths coming up under the Lemon Balm.....funny too cause I was sure I had moved those two years ago. The purple Iris are my absolute favorites tho, they remind me of grape popsicles from the ice cream man when I was a kid. The leaves of the Bearded Iris stay strong and green well into the winter.
I don't even want to *think* about all the irises and daylilies I should be dividing...they're just going to have to wait for next year, I think. There are masses of them, yikes... Go you on the daffys - I have lots of them, but they are mostly just plain ones, white, yellow. I keep feeding just a handful of interesting ones in each year for variety (pink and double this year). You can never have too many, right? I may manage to divide the crocosmia at least, it is easier to pop out of the ground than the others and I have quite a lot. - Whoops! I edit this to say I'm glad I checked up on it first - crocosmia are apparently supposed to be pulled apart and replanted in the spring rather than the fall!
You have been busy. I didn't get any new bulbs planted this fall. I thought about moving some tulips but haven't had the time. Hyacinths are a favorite around here so they are planted when we can see them out the front window in the spring. I guess it isn't too late to plant - maybe I should go loooking for some bulbs.
Gosh I hope your back doesn't suffer any aches tomorrow after all that bulb planting!!! Well done. You MUST remember to post piccies of all the lovely flowers you'll get next year so that we can all drool over them. :-D
