TULIPS!

So!

About the tulips.

I've been rubbish about posting here. It's been a combination of being really busy and not being able to be bothered. I haven't posted garden photos in a long time, which is a shame, and which will need to be rectified.

I MAY have gone very slightly overboard when it comes to tulips. This is TOTALLY not my fault.

I have probably mentioned that I used to not really like tulips, but that's because I knew them as these fairly boring red things that were in the store. Then, I saw them outside in the spring, coming up when you're starved for color, and I fell in love.

I went to the Chelsea Flower Show last year, and Blom's Bulbs has the most amazing tulip display, and I ordered some black and blue parrot tulips. I planted them in pots, since we hadn't moved yet, and they were SO GORGEOUS in the spring. I also had some of the giant red ones, some lily-flowered yellow ones, and some white ones. They were fabulous.

I had gotten some from Blom's, and then an identical variety from the nursery to see if Blom's was better. They really were. The bulbs were bigger, which led to huge and healthy flowers.

At any rate, I knew that tulips divide eventually, and that you need at some point to dig them up and divide them.

So, when tulip planting season came, I looked at Blom's, and thought, you know, I'll just get the ones I really like from Blom's, and then I'll get some from the garden centre. So I ordered a few from Blom's and went to the garden centre, but they didn't have a large variety.

So I went back and placed a fairly sizeable order at Blom's. The problem, of course, was that they had crocuses and things as well. I didn't want to get too many daffodils, as a) the woman who lived here before planted several types of daffodil in the garden already, and b) I dug up daffodils at my last flat that were dying under bushes, and this turned out to be well over 100 bulbs. But, I figured, five here and there of various types of tulip, and it will be lovely.

Then I went back to the garden centre. It turned out I'd not seen their MAIN racks of tulips, but only their little side bits. They actually had a fairly okay selection--nowhere near as good as Blom's of course, but....

So I ended up getting a few more.

Then I took last year's tulips out of the pots. It turns out that each of the bulbs I planted divided into FIVE OR SIX bulbs. I don't know if they will flower this year, but it means that I had SEVERAL HUNDRED tulip bulbs already.

Oh, dear.

So this is why I needed a few days off to plant tulips. And crocuses. And daffodils. And allium, and ixia, and these pretty white things, the name of which escapes me.

I might put together a list of the bulbs in my garden and post it. You will either be horrified or impressed.