I had plans for this weekend. First was to finish copy edits on Friday, which I did. Yea me! Second was to plant all my bulbs on Saturday. That didn't happen. My dad and I only managed to put about 60 bulbs in. That's a rough estimate. It didn't help that we had a late start to the day and then had to make a run to Home Depot to pick up dirt and more cedar mulch.
The other plan that needed some adjustment on the fly was the map I'd drawn of the new garden and where I planned to put everything. It turns out that some of these flowers needed more distance between the bulbs than my map allowed for. The silver lilies actually needed 18" to 24"! That totally hosed everything up.
We started at the back of the garden with the giant aliums. These are the only flowers that came without planting instructions printed on the bag and the general information I found said big bulbs should be planted at 6 inches down. So we started doing six inches, but I managed to find a booklet in among the bulbs as I unpacked one of the boxes, and when I paged through it, I found that the bulbs needed to go 8 inches down. More digging.
The second mistake of the day was because I glanced too quickly at one of the bags. It had 6 bulbs in there (which was printed at the top) and they were supposed to be planted 3 inches down. You can probably guess what happened. I saw the 6, we dug down that far and put in 7 of the 12 bulbs before I glanced again and went: Oops! We dug up the first three bulbs and replanted them, but when we tried to dig up the 4th, we couldn't find it. My dad and I were pinching dirt clumps, trying to see if one of them was the bulb. We never did find it and we can only hope it's still buried in the ground. We opted to leave the other bulbs alone. They're really going to have to fight their way to the surface next spring. :-)
Today it's back out to plant the bulbs again. We've got to finish; failure is not an option. Not only do I want this over and done, but it dropped below freezing last night and the ground is frost-covered. It's still only 31 degrees right now. The challenge is that there are about 90 bulbs to go and I have to hope I don't run out of room in the garden! I thought I'd have more than enough space--I even have pages turned down in a catalog for bulbs I want to buy next spring--but some of these distances between plants is really hosing me up.
Then there's the tree ring. I want to put some of the bulbs in there and make room for the peonies. My mom has some gorgeous flowers and she needs to thin her plants, so I was going to take some of them. I was counting on having room in the tree ring for them, but that doesn't look as if it's going to happen at the rate I'm going. Plus, I have more toad lilies coming next spring. Oy! I'm already trying to figure out where I can put another garden.
Needless to say that since I'm going to be outside all day today, my plan to spend the day writing is shot to hell.
