Mid-March Daffodils

After a week of balmy springtime, it's cloudy and cool today. This photo is from a week or so ago, when new daffodils I planted last fall were beginning to bloom. I found a big bag a hundred bulbs at a local store for $14 and decided to plant them as a surprise for Mendy. That new, very bare tree in the photo is the Golden Locust I gave her in November 2005. I'll post pictures of the amazing green-gold leaves as soon as the tree has some this year! The bluish cast on the foreground are tiny blue wildflowers whose name I don't know yet...

Now that the daffodils have started, I hope to plant a hundred every autumn, all down the gentle slope that is the backyard. That's the view out the kitchen window while washing dishes -- one of the most important vistas of the garden design in our opinions.

Digging a little hole even big enough for a daffodil is a challenge in this incredibly rocky soil. I cheated on these and used the soft dirt around the new tree, which I busted up already. Under the sycamore there are huge roots -- real danger for the riding mower, so I cheated by planting the bulb nearly on top of the ground, then covered with a few inches of top soil from my dwinding pile (purchased from a "dirt farm" in Prairie Grove, AR) then topped it all off with shredded leaves for the winter. Judging from the results, this works! More on my favorite leaf shredders in the next post!