more bulbs

It is boom time for the spring bulbs, bursting forth through the warming soil in the soft sunshine, and apparently unchecked by the recent frosty nights. This year the tulips are gorgeous but short (could it be time to switch bulb supplier?), the fritillaries are finally naturalising in various spots around the garden, especially under the little avenue of amelanchier trees, the hyacinths are mostly picked and gone (we must plant many more this year!) and the narcissi are forming thick carpets and perfuming the air as they ping open before we manage to pick them. I am always disappointed that the slender little stems of narcissi take up so little space in a bucket, so that we have to pick hundreds and hundreds to fill one up, and I end up picking other chunkier things for preference, while the narcissi remain in place. There is also the problem of mixing narcissi with other flowers in a bucket, as the fresh sap which oozes from the narcissi stems can block the stems of other flowers and cause them to wilt, so that we have to keep them separate. But this spring the narcissi which we’ve bought home - careful picking of each or the thirty or so varieties which we grow in the walled garden - have given us more pleasure than anything else. There is such variety among this group, both of form and scent. We mass vases of them together in various room, lots of different kinds at once, and we sniff each kind in turn. My current favourite for scent is Prom Dance, a little pale yellow kind with a flat face, which smells faintly and sweetly of lemons. Sir Winston Churchill is another favourite for his plump little button-like flowers, egg white petals splodged with streaks of orange yolk, atop strong stems and smelling sweet and strong. The florists’ favourite I think has been Delnashaugh, which flowers early, with long stems and big flowers. The flowers are a muddle of thin white petals mingled with ruffled pale peach ones - so pretty.