Bulbs shipped today

Last year and this year both I ordered a large amount of lily bulbs from Van Bourgondien. This year I only ordered afew days ago.

Last year I ordered the lily bulbs much earlier than this year and they came at the end of April. I had trenches dug and was ready for them for three weeks before they arrived. It was driving me nuts as I needed to get them in the ground so I could shovel the dirt back and get more things done.


This year I was expecting the same thing but noooooo....
I just got an e-mail notice that the lily order has shipped today. Yikes. I was already way behind were I need to be as not getting my daylily moving done due to rain and cold. Now I am going to have to get out and dig that big trench this week that I intend to put most of the bulbs in. Ugg!

The annual plight of the mail order gardener. Good luck with your digging!

Just got home from doing errands today and the bulbs came already. That was fast. I pushed the box inside because it was out on the porch but I have not even opened it yet. Its cold and damp today again so since it was not a great day for working in the garden, I decided to make it the run errands day. Will have to get to unpacking the lillies later as I now have lots of work (pays the bills) came in on my computer to get done today.

Even if bulbs arrive late, they will grow just the same. They will just be a little behind schedule and a bit shorter the first year. No harm done.

I remember many of mine were short last year but I was not very surprised. I had found that first year bulbs are never as tall as they should be. Plus I knew that it really did not matter to the bulbs that they were not planted three weeks earlier. It just mattered to me because I was ready for them with those long trenches done and I wanted to get them filled back up instead of trying to garden around them.

Well, I have been unpacking them and starting on a sketch for the order in which I am going to plant. As usual, lovely bulbs that should grow well and put on quite the summer display for my garden. The plantings I have planned surely will look nice but I can tell you that I need hundreds more for what I have planned to do.

I spent a lot this spring because I got fancier types and also trumpet and trumpet hybrid lillies. Cost more than the asiatic and oriental lily bulbs I got last year. So I spent about the same but have about half the amount of bulbs.

I just dragged myself in from the garden and planting 141 lily bulbs and moving two daylilies. There is still plenty of daylight left and its a nice day but I can't do anymore right now.

I decided to add the trumpet lillies to the lily rows upstairs but the only trouble with that is that I also wanted them in the original spot I got them for. Sooo.. the only solution, order more bulbs. Which I just did. Since I was ordering I added afew more planned to go in the second row of the planter box in the front yard between the second row of (not there yet) daylilies. I have the bulbs for there but decided I needed afew more as I miscounted and would have had to do groupings of 2 instead of groupings of 3 which I would rather do. Those are going to be groupings of Asiatics.

Then I added some dwarf oriental lilies to go in that same planter box in the front between the first row of daylilies (again not there yet) as the plan for that garden is coming together.