He doesn't know my plans for them. Oh, most of them will go in the expected places - as many as I can cram into the side yard because that's the area near our sunroom and I love peering through the little panes of glass in spring eagerly trying to catch sight of the first little green nubs that signal that spring is here.
And I ordered a couple hundred miniature daffodils to tuck amid all the rocks and crevices in the slowly developing woodland garden. And there are a few bags of bulbs reserved for the secret garden - and a few hundred pure white daffs to add to the ones already growing under the apple tree near the gazebo - in fervent hopes that they will bloom when the apple tree does. They did that once which is what inspired the stepped up planting plan. And they have never gotten their act together since. Maybe next year - that perpetual gardener's song of hope.
I have a mix of bright species tulips and grape hyacinths to go into the heath and heather garden because I can see it from my kitchen window - and spring bulbs really should be planted where they can bring us the most springtime cheer and color.
But the bulbs that I know will bring the most cheer to the most people won't be growing in my garden at all. I'm planting them across the street in my neighbor's front yard.
It's my fault that she has no grass, because I talked her into getting rid of it all to create a garden. The garden is still young, with a lot of undeveloped perennials and so she relies heavily on annuals to create a summer display. And starting from scratch as she did, it has taken a fairly hefty investment in perennials to even be able to envision a full garden - someday. Needless to say, there wasn't anything left in her budget for bulbs.
We bought her heaths and heathers for winter interest, as well as lavender, heucheras, evergreen candytuft and other things that look OK in winter as well as summer - but winter still brings huge bare spaces in what most people think of as a lawn. Every winter I worry that she will get so discouraged by the patchy look of her front yard that she will give up and go back to grass.
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