Bulbs

My fall bulb order has arrived and this is what I got, 50 of them.  It’s the 1916 tulip ‘Blue Aimable’ and here’s what I know about it: "Though it’s not blue, it’s a soft, silvery lilac that combines amiably with just about everything. Even better, its tall, graceful blossoms last and last in bloom, longer than any other tulip we’ve grown. Darwin, 24 inches, zones 3-7, from Holland."  And under $20 for the bunch.

I’ve arrived at this simple 50-of-one-tulip design idea after a colorful assortment of tulip design failures:

• Tulips bloom too early, competing with the daffodils and leaving the border all spent-leafy in late spring.
• Different tulips fail to bloom together, as intended.
• Tulips fail to be the imagined color.
• Tulips fail to STAY the right color, morphing from pink to – eek! – orange and clashing big-time with their neighbors.

Finally the only thing standing between me and tulip design paradise are the backyard squirrels and y’all remember how I foiled them last year using pepper flakes?  Next year it’ll be perfect.

I’m not even worried that I don’t know which of these two photos accurately depicts the damn flowers, or if they’ll be some other version of blue-purple-pink.  How can they not look great against the backdrop of major dogwood action, minor viburnum action, and a scattering of blooming azaleas?  God, just thinking about spring is making me hot.  You know, gardener hot.

Remember, loyal readers, how excited I was about my latest tulip design when I planted the bulbs last fall?  I believe I said it would be PERFECT, so maybe I should learn something about hubris from this sad story, but gardeners are an excitable bunch and I know you all understand.

The Design:  In between perennials in the front of a sunny border I planted three Single Late tulips, chosen because they bloom after most of my daffs but with the dogwoods and azaleas and because they’re all the same type and presumably would bloom at the same time, a very important factor in tulip design, believe you me.  So from the fine bulb supplier John Scheepers (no cheap pot-luck bulbs from Home Depot, nosiree) I ordered the purple Cum Laude, the "pink" Esther and the "pale yellow" Francoise, for a total of 50. 

Anyway, here’s the border and here’s what popped up.  We’re supposed to see yellow at the bottom, then purple, and pink on top.  First, do you see any purple?  Neither do I.  Or, for that matter, do you see any pink or yellow?  Those Esthers look orangey-red to my eyes and the "pale yellow" sure looks like white.  I know color’s a subjective thing and I may be picking nits, but remember, this was gonna be PERFECT.

But back to the missing purple Cum Laudes, a clear case of trouble in tulipland.  First a photo of Cum Laudes in their tall glory in someone else’s garden, and here’s a shot of what came up instead.  They’re really short rose-colored lily-shaped tulips, probably China Pink.

What Went Wrong?  At first I thought the good folks at Scheepers had sent me the wrong bulbs, but in writing this post I realize I planted China Pinks a few years back and while they’re much shorter this time around, they’re back.  So the mystery is: Where the hell are the tall purple Cum Laudes?  Did they all fail?  Did I just imagine planting them?  And why am I having to deal with yet another failed tulip design when it seemed like I was doing everything right and this just isn’t fair?

Remember last week I showed you some plants with one lone pink tulip popping up from last year’s design?  Well, it looks like they’re back in droves, or drifts to be more accurate, and they’re not supposed to do this.  That’s because I removed all of the foliage as soon as the flowers gave out, which everybody in the hort world will tell you to never do, warning that if the foliage isn’t left to slowly dry up, you won’t have blooms the next year.  My mental retort to these warnings is that there’s no way I’d let such hideous foliage dominate the front of that border for the next two months.  Not a chance. 

So to all the experts of the world, so much more knowledgeable than dirty-handed gardeners like us,  I present last year’s foliage-deprived ‘Pink Impression’ tulips, which classify as Darwins if I’m not mistaken.

And to complete my 1-2 punch in the face of conventional wisdom, I’ll tell you I don’t let my daffodil foliage flop over, either.  You know, we’re warned to not even tie the foliage in a knot in some desperate attempt to hide the long and ugly process of dying.  But when my daff foliage starts to flop, meaning on top of the groundcover – uh-uh, not gonna let that happen.  I tie bunches of them up with twist ‘ems.  They then stand nicely at attention until they’re weak enough to lift.  The daffs have been going strong now for 15 or so years, spreading and blooming their hearts out. 

I probably enjoy doing this too much and have unresolved issues with authority figures. 

The results are in from my 2001 trial of various miniature daffodils (narcissus, if you insist).  For sheer staying power, ‘Jetfire’ is the winner by a mile.  It’s even spreading, so it qualifies as a naturalizing bulb (as opposed to perennializing, meaning returning for several years).  ‘Thalia’ and ‘Tete-a-Tete’ tie for second place, still popping up after five years but in diminishing numbers.  And the varieties that have proven to be short-lived are: ‘Pipit,’ ‘Bell Song,’ ‘Jack Snipe,’ and ‘Hawera,’ and all of the doubles.  None of the contestants received any attention on my part – surely we all have better things to do than pamper our daffodils.

This critter could be eating one of my tulip bulbs, maybe even enough of them to ruin my meticulously planned Tulip Design of 2006 (alert the media.) But in 2005 every one of the tulips I planted came up, so I’ll tempt fate here and say I found a fool-proof formula for squirrel deterrence.  To wit:  red pepper flakes – cheap and plentiful.  I throw a few flakes into each hole just above the bulb before replacing the rest of the dirt.  I see squirrels perusing the border but they don’t even dig. 

So squirrels, to you I say:  HA!