Hope Springs Eternal

The weather has turned, bringing us a quick shot of some much-needed rain along with fall-like temperatures for the foreseeable future. We’re also heading back into the darkness, and that means that we’re starting to make some final harvests around the garden for the season. The tomatoes will be fussy with the blast of cold nighttime air, and I pulled many of our big storage crops (pumpkins, cabbages, black beans) during my last picking session.

Still, while some things are coming to an end, it’s already time to think about the spring. Our bulbs came in the mail yesterday:


We have three more varieties of garlic: German Red, Spanish Benitee, and Early Italian, and hopefully these will do far better than they did this year — we didn’t have much of a harvest at all, which is why I had to order more to plant instead of using our own extra for seed.  

I also ordered some bulbs for the cutting garden, since many are now too old to produce any blooms. According to the good folks at Burpee, this is what they should look like in the spring:

Photo courtesy of Burpee.com

Fosteriana tulip mix (all my favorite sunset colors!).

Photo courtesy of Burpee.com

Apricot Beauty tulips.

Photo courtesy of Burpee.com

A mix of hyacinths.

I’m actually thinking of moving the hyacinths out of the cutting garden to start a small garden outside my tiny office. That area gets sun in the spring before the maple leafs out, and I’m thinking that a little pocket garden devoted to things that smell good would be nice there.

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