Arrrgh!!!

Bogie responded to my comment about trying to get some bulbs planted last minute. I've had this terrible cold for a week or more now, but yesterday it was FIFTY DEGREES here! Normally by now our ground would be frozen hard, and I'd have to save the bulbs by planting them in containers, but I could hear the garden calling to me.

There's just something about early bulbs blooming in Spring that is so comforting, and I HATE to waste things. Those bulbs had been talking to me for the past two or three months, asking when I was going to make time for them. So, despite my cold, I bundled up, and headed out.

First, I fed the birds. Then, I collected the wheelbarrow, a shovel, my tool bucket and the new trowels the kids gave me for Christmas.

I have a narrow spot, the width of the garden, between two pods of iris that was perfect for these bulbs. I started shoveling the soil into the wheelbarrow. Then I heard this sound. The shovel was hitting something. NO.....it couldn't be!

A number of years ago, too many exactly for me to remember, I decided I would outwit the chipmunks, and planted tulips in a wire cage. Unfortunately, the tulips were short-lived, but the wire cage was still there, in great shape.

What should have been a twenty minute chore, ended up being more like 75 minutes. I couldn't dig the cage out, because part of it was sitting under iris that need to be relocated. The iris are more important to me than the bulbs.

So, I decided to cut the top off the cage, plant the new bulbs there for this winter, and then dig everything up next summer after the iris have bloomed. I went inside for the wire cutters and wire by wire clipped open about two thirds of the lid. I've promised myself that I will go back and dig the cage out next summer, so that no one will get hurt on the remains of the cage.

I got most of the bulbs planted. I even replanted some crocus that I inadvertently dug up. I think I killed off a tulip or two that was planted just past the end of the wire cage. I'm going to have to pull together Spring pictures into an album, so that I can remember what I've planted, where.

One of my favorite signs in Elegante Mother's collection of garden decorations, is a little medallion that says, "I don't remember planting that there!"

It was good to get out, despite the fact that it took longer than I had hoped. It was good to get the bulbs in. I still have my cold, but it doesn't seem to be any worse than it was yesterday, so the exercise and the chance to play in the garden may have helped. YEA!! Now I can stop feeling guilty about the bulbs!