Planting Tulips, Planting Hope

I did it again.  I procrastinated and once again I ended up planting tulip bulbs in January.  But at least it’s been nice weather I didn’t have to plant in the snow like last year!

When I went to the big garden center last weekend they were all out of bulbs.  The smug little gal (all of about 20 years old) at the info desk informed me that it was WAY too late for planting bulbs and that I’d just have to wait until next year.

Is that so?

Apparently she doesn’t know me very well – the fastest way to get me to work harder at something is to tell me that I can’t do it.

***hmph!  {hands on hips}***

So I made another stop at the small, quaint garden center near my house.  There the owner pointed to the boxes of bulbs on the shelf, and although they were a little picked over, there were still plenty of yellow tulip bulbs for my front yard.

Spring tulips are just about my favorite flower – especially the yellow ones.  To me they are the epitome of happy and I like to plant them en masse (a very fancy word for a whole bunch of bulbs in one space).    Planting large quantities of bulbs could take forever if you are using one of these two tools-

In my humble opinion, the bulb planter is one of the most inefficient, useless tools on the planet.  If you want to plant a mass of bulbs get yourself a shovel!

The next thing I do is dig out a trench about eight inches deep.

Because we have some kind of mole/vole/gopher/bulb-eating-varmint in our yard, the garden center dude suggested some of this critter repellant.

So I sprinkled some of these granules into my trench and then set my bulbs.  You might not be able to tell from the photo below, but I like to plant my tulip bulbs pretty close together – maybe 3-4 inches apart.  Tulips aren’t perennial in my neck of the woods so I don’t have to worry about spacing too much (as opposed to daffodils which do come back every year).

The last step is to fill in the trench wait for Spring.

For me, planting bulbs is the ultimate expression of hope.  Even though I can’t see what’s going underground, I just have to trust that what I planted is growing and developing.  Planting bulbs is also a practice in patience – it’ll be a couple of months before I know if the bulbs will flower and right now Spring seems like a long way away.  But I take comfort in the fact that in my 43 years here on this earth, Spring has never not come.  Not one time!  Sometimes it’s wetter or dryer than I prefer.  And then sometimes it’s warmer or cooler.

But no matter how long the winter, Spring always comes.

So if you haven’t already, there’s probably still time to plant some hope in your own garden.

Peace, Kelly