Mother nature

Today is bulb day. Mid October, we've had some chill in the air to prepare the dirt for a good winter sleep, and the few bulbs I actually purchased for this year have arrived.

I have been psyched for this for weeks. I have counted on this day to help me ease out of warm summer days and into fallwinter. It seems to me that we only have 3 seasons around here. Spring, Summer, and fallwinter. One day it will be a high of 50 and the next a frigid 22 low from mid Oct to late Feburary.

Although we've had several cool nights and days, today presented with humidity and the promise of August heat. I suspected something was amiss when I first put my glasses on this morning and they fogged. Usually it is my brain that stays in a bit of a fog, but today my glasses decided to give it a try.

I put on my overalls and went downstairs for tea. When I broke a sweat coming down the stairs I wondered "What in the world?"

When I got into the Cabrio, the top automatically opened. I turned on the radio and caught the weather report. "High of 86 today" my radio sweated the news to me.

I couldn't believe it. I'd been sleeping under a blanket for a while now, and suddenly we're stepping into summer again? Was Mother nature P-M-S-ing? or what?

Oh, well, I decided. The heat won't hang around long, I'll bulb anyway.

When I arrived at work, I went downstairs and brought up the two boxes of tulip bulbs and early blooming daffs that have been resting all summer. The early daffs came from a church member who willingly thinned her bed out early summer for me. For the church. I noticed the flowers on her plants were just a tad smaller and delicate than the strong yellow flowers I planted a year ago and I thought the variety would look nice. The members here are generous that way. Many people are when it comes to plant sharing, I have discovered.

I made the trip for compost, loaded up my car with bags of it and put on my garden gloves. I sharpened my hand shovel, popped a piece of super bubble into the old mouth and brought the boxes outside.

My bulb collection has grown allsummer. Most I either dug up or begged for from others' yards,

I decided to plant seasonally starting with early spring bloomers. Windflowers.
I hoped they would be a groundcover of daisy-like blooms that would eventually cover the daff greenery after the blooms had faded.

I pulled out the bags of little black bulbs and set them on the ground where I wanted to plant them all along the front beds of the church.

When I got to the end of the bed I turned around and, with shovel in hand, I headed back to where i started, ready to plant where they lay.

The bulbs were no longer laying on the dirt where I had left them. They were some, back in the bag, some scattered in the box, and a few others rolling around in the grass.

Hmmm,I thought to myself. I scooped a handful of the AWOL bulbs and walked over to the dirt. I pressed my shovel into the rich earth and made a lovely hole, warm, comforting and inviting for any bulb to inhabit.

I dropped a bulb into the hole and it flew right up like Marilyn Monroe's white dress in that scene on the sidewalk. Luckily, I caught it. I tried again, this time placing rather than dropping. The bulb reacted to the hole as two resistant magnets. The little black ball would not, could not, or maybe just refused to go to bed.

The 86 had hit by that time with 100% humidity and I looked like I had just run through the sprinkler. Wishful thinking. Suddenly, I was weary. Hot and bothered. I decided that Mother nature knows better than human nature sometimes, and this was one of those times. I bagged up the bulbs and carried them back inside.

Maybe next week will bring a bulb day again.