Just because Daffodil Days are over doesn’t mean the daffodils are done (especially this year). But we’re onto the next thing. Even though there aren’t anywhere near 50,000 tulips, they are doing their best to steal the show from the daffodils. Clumps of 10 or 20 here and there is all it takes, plus a warm sunny day like we’ve had for the last week or so, for them to open wide. It’s almost as if they’re demanding their own celebratory event. (Why not?) And every visitor is drawn like a magnet. Especially to the rows of cutting garden tulips. Some of the colors are so super-saturated that they’re nearly impossible to photograph but even I had to try yesterday around midday because that’s exactly when they’re lit like light bulbs and knocking everyone’s socks off.

Every year we trial new-to-us tulips in the Cutting Garden and use them to plan next year’s spring designs in the Rose and North Gardens but I don’t ever remember having as many fast favorites as I do this year. Baby-girl pink is usually too sweet for my taste but ‘Pink Star’ has attitude and the prettiest wavy, baby-blue leaves. There’s no way I wouldn’t fall head over heels for ‘Apricot Parrot’ and it’s even prettier than I imagined.

I thought ‘André Rieu’ was a little bit blah until I looked into its cobalt blue eyes and then I realized that I love its blue-purple color (its picture doesn’t do it justice) and racing stripes. I’m not sure what to think of ‘Red Shine’, which is actually more of a blow-your-eyes out pink but I think I love it.

And it will be really hard not to use the fringed blaze of ‘Miami Sunset’ in every garden next year. They’re extra cool because every bloom came with its own mini-me right alongside.

Gail and I keep sending volunteers up to see the tulips in the Rose Garden as if it’s part of their job. (And so it is!) Along with fat fluffy over-saturated ‘Miranda’ that no one believes is really a tulip, and the tall and lovely ‘Silverstream’ that opened in a multi-colored range of yellows and reds and are fading now to red-edged creams, we have a few extra special species tulips tucked in and around the roses. ‘Lady Jane’ has been a favorite for a few years now and my new all-time, number-one favorite might be Tulipa orphanidea ‘Flava’, shown below right, still closed up on a chilly morning and complemented perfectly by cerulean blue forget-me-nots.

Last year we lost a lot of tulips to the squirrels (there were no acorns). This year we also lost a few in every garden mostly to deer grazing instead even though we dutifully sprayed stinky stuff and even spread a little Milorganite around (they hate that smell too). –And just yesterday the volunteers removed whole patches of bud-nipped tulips from the Idea Garden. But I can’t say I miss them. The ones that are left are showy enough to celebrate spring in style.

Do you have a favorite tulip this year — or ten? Do you do anything special to keep them from being eaten or do you just make sure to plant enough to go around?

Even though the daffodils are still blooming their little hearts out I can’t help looking forward to the next thing(s) following hot on their heels. The tulips and cherry trees are just getting going, winter hazel and crabapples are on the way. I’m pretty sure that the spring display is just going to keep getting more and more spectacular. More colorful, anyway. It may be too early to tell, but at least right now my favorite tulips are a color reverse pair in the Cutting Garden — ‘Gavota’, which is red with yellow edges and its opposite, ‘Boston’. And I’m really enjoying ‘Silverstream’ in the Rose Garden. Even though we planted them in the herb garden last year (and again this year) I had forgotten that they start out a paintbox mix of flecked yellows, pinks and reds. So pretty.

And now that we have cut back, tidied, and weeded (mostly) the gardens, divided and redistributed perennials and moved some shrubs like playing musical plants, we’re ready for what comes next. Planting new things! It’s a thrill to finally see the available real estate and begin to envision where the gardens will take us this year that I can hardly wait. But our perennial plant orders haven’t arrived yet and local nurseries haven’t quite stocked up or opened doors yet.

So in the meantime we’re using our gotta-plant energy to catch up on greenhouse work and think about moving out. In fact, the sweet peas went outside last week, ready for planting in the next couple of days, weather permitting. Next out will be all of the nearly-hardy perennials and shrubs like rosemary, phormium (some are out already and didn’t mind the touch of frost the other night), farfugium, camellias, and various and sundry salvias like S. guaranitica and S. leucantha. We’re really on a roll now even though we have to hold our horses a little.

What’s next in your garden? Are you ready to plant new things yet or are you still tidying, weeding, dividing and redistributing (like I am at home)?

It was a big and busy day yesterday, in more ways than one. We passed another milestone in this year’s garden calendar – the first real killing frost fell finally. And while that marked the official end of the growing season, we were glad for a chilly but sunshiny morning to finish planting — with the assistance of a small group of weather-proof volunteers — a few more ticking time bombs of hope for next year’s growing season. It’s hard to imagine just by looking at this tiny Tulipa clusiana ‘Lady Jane’ bulb, which looks for all the world to me like it has a lit fuse, that come spring it will burst into an exquisitely delicate pink-flamed flower. But that’s the promise so long as the squirrels don’t defuse it first. We also planted 300 wood sorrel (Oxalis adenophylla – I wish I had taken a picture of those hair-coverd fuzzbombs), a few hundred more crocus in the bed just outside the moongate, and 200 tiny winter aconite (Eranthis hyemalis) nuggets for our earliest visitors’ enjoyment. As much as I don’t just love the down-on-all-fours back break of poking narrow holes between the roots and stems of perennials and roses, I got kind of into it yesterday. There was definitely something cathartic in busting through a just-frozen crust of soil, with the sun warm on my back, and thinking about spring.

And now that the bulbs are all in, it’s time for us to think about winter. We took advantage of our volunteers’ extra hands to put the rest of the frost-nipped North Garden to bed. Gail and I feel a very grateful relief for being able to really focus on the next thing. It would be way too soon in real life to start decorating for Christmas but here at Blithewold, the mansion is almost completely gilded already and will be complete after the garden volunteers hang ornaments on the big tree next week. And here at the greenhouse Gail and I will be spending the next week and a half getting ready for the newest Christmas at Blithewold feature event, Christmas Sparkle. Every Friday night until Christmas the path from the mansion through the Enclosed Garden to the greenhouse will be lit with lanterns. There will be fires in the Enclosed Garden for marshmallow roasting (s’mores!) and hot chocolate in the greenhouse, which will be (as we like to think it always is) a welcoming wintery oasis of green growing things.

Has frost fallen on your garden yet? Are you focused now on the end of this season or are you still planting time bombs for the next?

That’s my answer for anyone who might wonder why I haven’t posted in a few days. 4000 bulbs, give or take. Planted. Mostly. Still planting… Over the last couple of weeks, Gail and Tricia and I have tried hard to get all 3686 bulbs that we ordered along with the few hundred tulips we saved from last spring placed and in the ground before we let the volunteers take a much deserved winter break. We’re also trying to stay a step ahead of the weather – something wicked this way comes next week, according to forecasters… One of the hardest parts of rushing to get the bulbs in is having to make way for them by taking out plants that are still blooming. (We plant tulips in the same slots as our annuals.) In a perfect scenario, frost would have done the dirty work for us. But this year there are still bees and butterflies working the African blue basil, dahlias and zinnias. Every plant that came out broke our hearts a tiny bit so we left as much as we could, especially in the Rose Garden.

The physical act of planting is also not easy (except wherever the ground was loosened by taking annuals out). The volunteers did the lion’s share, down on all fours in the bulb hunchback – my least favorite yoga pose. And we have all cheered ourselves up as we stretched and arched our backs back into proper alignment that the promise of a spectacular spring is worth a  few hours of discomfort. I watched everyone get the same glazed look on their face as they cast ahead to the days when tulips like Blue Spectacle, Golden Artist, and Akebono bloom in concert. When unearthly earthy Fritillaria persica dangle deep purple-black bells on 2′ stems in the Rose Garden, and Allium Pinball Wizard lights up the North Garden. We planted more varieties of muscari and scilla, endless crocus, and are trying brodiaea, pushkinia, and a tiny oxalis that hasn’t been gone in yet because we can’t make up our minds where we’d love to see it more – the Rock Garden or the Rose?

Bulb planting takes a kind of blind faith and strong constitution that I believe must be unique to gardeners as a species. Bulbs are the ultimate in delayed gratification, dormant proof of gardeners’ collective optimism because they give absolutely no hint of what’s to come. We can only hope as they go in that they’ll spring out again in some more fabulous form. And our fingers have to stay crossed that this year that the squirrels and deer find plenty of other things to eat…

Have you started planting bulbs in your garden yet? Are you pinning your hopes for spring on anything new?

We’re all – plants and gardeners – breathing a sigh of relief after our rain. It was a good soaking of anywhere from 2.5 – 5 inches depending on who you talk to. My bucket had about 4″ in it but I’m not sure rain gauges caught as much. (Some of the rain definitely fell sideways.) However much we got, we needed it and it must have put a dent in our drought. My fingers are crossed that we’ll start getting more rain at regular intervals, during the night and never on weekends…

The tulips did take a beating like I thought they might but I think they’re still quite beautiful, even broken. Nature is a drama queen after all, tragically lovely most of the time.

The rain came in the nick of time for planting, if not for the tulips. We just finished transplanting – raise your hand if, like me, you were madly dashing around your garden trying to get the last things divided and moved before the skies opened – and have just received our biggest order of perennials and annuals. The annuals will rest inside the greenhouse for a few weeks more until we can be sure we’re past our last frost date (I feel so badly for the people who got snow with this storm. How diabolical is it to go from 80 degree summer weather back to winter in the span of a week?) but we’ll start planting the perennials this week. Going into moist soil, they’ll have a much better chance of taking off quickly and thriving without us having to baby them along like we have the transplants.

Did you get the rain you needed? (Did you get SNOW?) Did you finish transplanting in time or will you do more now?