I was up early this morning to a foggy day; the trees bent from last night’s rain. The kind of day you think, maybe, you should just go back to bed. Instead, the idea of a cup of hot tea lures you to the kitchen, and by the time you’ve drunk your tea you are too wide awake to crawl back under the blankets.
What can you do with a day like today? Washing, vacuum the livingroom carpet, wash the kitchen floor, bake a cake — all of these require more energy than you can summon up. A trip to a nursery to look at this year’s offering of spring flowering bulbs? Now that idea holds a lot of appeal.
Annie, bless her kind heart, has offered to take me to a nursery some time this week, so holding a brochure listing available bulbs I sit down to make a list. Mind you, when we get there, the list is left in my pocket while we browse, dreaming, among a host of tempting pictures attached to boxes of fat bulbs. Gotta have 10 of these, 20 of those, and at least 30 of these little beauties …
Reality wakens me up. There are only a few pots available. Others already contain daffodils, tulips and an assortment of crocus, hyacinths, muscari and snowdrops, and there is a limit to what I can actually afford, although I would willingly give up a week’s breakfasts to buy 20 chionodoxa bulbs to go beneath some yellow winter pansies.
Ah me, visions of spring and we haven’t yet seen a sign of winter. Gardeners are a crazy lot, aren’t we?
Do you have a gardening question or comment for Helen? Call her at 250-656-5918 or email editor@peninsulanewsreview.com.