735 bulbs

Today's bulb planting was not such fun. Yesterday was remarkably pleasant: wrapped up warm, and the snowy valley was quite attractive. Today was just wet. And grey.

We started by sorting out the strawberries a bit: although they went in ok last week, we're slightly worried about drainage in the plot: it looked extremely wet yesterday, so we popped out to get some grit/sand. We've dumped some on the strawberry and raspberry beds, and tried to put some drainage channels in to help. It's been pretty wet for the last week or two, and especially over the last few days (the spring opposite the house is running at full flood), so it may not be fair circumstances to assess this, but I worry that some major hydraulic engineering may be required to keep the vegetable/fruit garden drained. However, we can't really implement anything (raised beds, drainage pipes, and soakaways) until next spring (financially speaking, if not temporally). If it doesn't look, later this week, like the beds are sufficiently drained, we'll have to lift the rasp/strawberries, pot them, and keep them in pots 'til spring. Not ideal, but better than them rotting off.

Anyway, once that was sorted, we then planted the rest of our spring and summer bulbs. In all, over the weekend, it's been 735 bulbs:

•    5 mini daffodils
  
•   10 Brodiaea (pots)
  
•   25 Camassia esculanta (pots)
  
•   30 double daffodils (extending the 300-odd on the SE edge)
  
•   30 'Cheerfulness' daffodils (yellow, with double trumpets: in the front around the Acer/hellebores)
  
•   30 'Pinocchio' tulips (in the front, around the evergreen bed, and in pots)
  
•   35 Oxalis 'Iron Cross' (pots, all over the place)
  
•   40 Anemone de Caen (under the trees in the S. corner)
  
•   40 Allium sphaerocephalon (pots)
  
•   50 small flowering Allium (pots)
  
•   50 botanical tulips (pots)
  
•   50 Scilla siberica (under the trees, again)
  
• 100 Anemone blanda (under the trees)
  
• 100 Puschkinia libanotica (under the trees)
  
• 140 mixed crocus (pots).
  

We also put five Helleborus niger around Christmas's grave (in the copse), and increased the three round the Acer in the front bed to five. Which, coupled with the 300-odd daffs we'd already put in, makes for about a thousand bulbs. And that's nowhere near 'done'. Oops. We also sorted out the garage, so the car can go away: hard frost predicted for Monday night, and it's no fun defrosting the car in the morning before driving off.