Autumn has been spectacular in New York this year. Contrary to the opinion of many people who speculated the summer drought would leave the trees brown, they have instead displayed a rich palette of yellow, orange and red. The views, framed in the windows looking out of my home, are like impressionist paintings of vibrant color. Driving anywhere, even a short trip to the grocery store, presents a new explosion of color. Against this backdrop, I have been planting. Surrounded by autumn leaves, I am dreaming of spring!
Planting bulbs and seeds is like magic. Something seemingly inert and dead goes into the ground and later miraculously sprouts into a glorious plant. As the harbingers of spring, bulbs are especially delightful. Last fall we planted 1,600 bulbs throughout the yard. The year before we planted even more.
Andrew discovered a program called the New Yorkers for Parks, Daffodil Project. Months ago, Andrew signed up to receive daffodils. He requested 1,200. We must all laugh at ourselves, from time to time. I myself am often guilty of miscalculating, whether it be time and I am late or early, I measure incorrectly and must redo part of a project or, as happened recently, I asked two people at a party how they know each other and I was abruptly told (with an admonishing look), “he is my date!” Andrew did not quite know what 1,200 bulbs would weigh. There is a good reason for this. The last bulbs Andrew planted were small drumstick allium bulbs. They are small enough that 1,200 bulbs could fit in a backpack, which is what Andrew proposed to use to pick up his daffodil bulbs. Not trying to be my usual imperious self, I went along with Andrew’s scheme, but told him I would bring an extra backpack just in case. We arrived at Union Square Park in Manhattan to pick up our bulbs, having taken the subway. The Daffodil Project volunteers brought us three huge, heavy bags of bulbs. One bag alone was difficult to carry, it was impossible to think we could carry three. We of course had thought we would take them to Newburgh on the train! The volunteers, at the distribution site, just shook their heads at us – as though we had no idea what we were doing. What could we do?
We laughed heartily! We then called Uber and took them Kew Gardens. I then drove to the city the following weekend to collect the bulbs (in my electric car).
One of the reasons the bags of daffodils were so heavy was that the program estimated 400 bulbs in each bag. The first bag yielded 712 bulbs. The second bag had 527 bulbs and the third bag had 600 bulbs. The result was a total of 1,839 daffodil bulbs planted around the yard.
Daffodils are lovely, but there are also other things to plant. In addition to the mixed daffodils from the Daffodil Project, I planted:
130 pheasant’s eye daffodils
25 Replete daffodils
25 Sweet Desire daffodils
25 My Story Daffodils
100 Wood Anemone Blanda
100 Scilla Siberica
100 Chionodoxa Forbesii
10 Wood Anemone Blue Shades
10 Queensland Tulips
10 Royal Virgin tulips
10 Akebono tulips
10 Blue Diamond tulips
10 Silver Parrot tulips
10 Mayflowering Beauty Trend tulips
10 Triumph Tulip Shirley
10 Triumph World Friendship tulips
60 Camassia Quamash
50 Mixed Hyacinths – Blue Jacket, Carnegie, City of Haarlem, Delft Blue, Fondant, and Jan Bos
The total bulbs planted (hopefully I did not leave anything out) is 2, 544. I was asked if I planted all of the bulbs individually. The answer is yes. With the exception of the tulips, I dug a single hole for each bulb. For the tulips, I planted them in groupings and dug a big hole to arrange the bulbs in a pattern. I did not use a mechanical devise to dig the holes. Much of the soil is full of rocks. Putting your shovel in the ground you never know the size of rock you will hit. When digging the tulips, I excavated very large rocks that were sitting just below the surface.
While I continue to revel in Autumn colors and begin to rake leaves, in the back of my mind I am eagerly anticipating bursts of color in Spring. Fall is fleeting, so I enjoy every day as much as possible. These 2 photos show how much things change in a matter of days.
“You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintery light. But you knew there would always be the spring…” Ernest Hemingway, A Movable Feast