I may have ordered a few spring-flowering bulbs…
The present forecast makes it seem unlikely that we’ll see hard frost for the next month, so I should be able to get the bulbs in the ground in early December after I get the keys to the house and garden.
Oh, and when I say “a few” I obviously mean 798 bulbs.
(WHAT??? They were on sale!!!)
250 are tall dark-red tulips for the front garden. (Tulip Seadov)

Against the white walls and dark-red windows of the house I think they will look rather spectacular, both when viewed from the road and when viewed from the entrance to the house.
I also bought – perhaps against my better judgement – 250 bulbs of Tulip Turkestanica…

Those I don’t know where to put, though, but I’m sure I’ll find some spot for them in the back garden. They’d disappear behind the low wall in the front garden, so nobody would enjoy them there!
So that’s 500 tulips. That’s got to be enough, right? Except…

My mother had ‘Queen of the night’ by one corner of the house I grew up in, and I can’t help loving that dark, rich colour in a tulip. Or, in fact, in any flower! I got 50 bulbs, just so I would have some to plant somewhere…

Okay, so I only got 8 of these bulbs, but I really love the look of this fritillaria persica adiyaman. They look like they will be spectacular, but like the ‘Queen of the Night’ tulips, these won’t go in the front garden; they are bought to be a bit special, so I need to find a special place for them where I can enjoy them the most.
These, though, will go in the front garden as they should bloom after the red tulips:

Alium Christophii – 40 of those – because the flowers are fireworks and can be dried and still be absolutely amazing. Since the inflorescence is around 6″ – 15cm – in diameter, even 40 of these should make quite a statement.
Oh, and there’s also something for the lawn.

Crocus Ruby giant tommasianus – 200 of them – will be planted in clusters in the lawn. I love the look of crocus brightening up a winter lawn, and while I shan’t plant a complete blanket I can at least have a few dots here and there. QUITE a few dots…
But that was all I bought! Honestly! (And yes, I did cut back again and again to get the number of bulbs this low.
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Meanwhile, yesterday I visited my grandmother. Lovely woman, growing old and weary of life as an infirm, hence the need to visit her while she’s still there to be visited.
Her old garden at the farm was amazing, but now that my aunt and uncle live there with two full-time jobs AND a hobby farm, the garden gets less attention than it used to. And her new garden by her medium-sized one-floor house is still good, but perhaps less inspiring.
Still, it has its moments in term of the sheer multitude of plants that were put in that medium-sized garden when she and my grandfather moved there! Some have died away as the tending of the garden became more and more sporadic and eventually was left to some hired guy who does his best, but there are still so many basic plants I want to poach when I visit her the next time. That is, if there will ever be a next time. I love her, and for her sake I wish she could soon have a morning when she wouldn’t have to wake up to this world again.
Anyway! Her garden, due to its relatively low level of maintenance these days, has a lot of spreading ground-covers. Strawberries of various kinds in particular. Clearly I need to get my hands on some shoots of those! But she also has hellebores to spare, and violas and rudbeckias and roses.
But… What I meant to say was that I poached a few seeds yesterday… I took more than a handful of seeds from her bladdernut (Staphylea pinnata – European bladdernut):

-Only after doing that did I read that some sources recommend 180 days of warm stratification, followed by 90 days of cold stratification… THAT’S not happening!!! I’ll plunk the seeds in pots in the greenhouse of the new garden and then see what happens.
It’s a lovely shrub, though, so I’d rather like one of the seeds to grow, but otherwise I should be able to get cuttings or sucklings from my grandmother’s bladdernut.
Anyway, I guess this is all for now… 14 days from now I’ll have a house and a garden!!!
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