Spring Bulb Care

 

For many gardeners, the hope planted in past autumns is now realized in the colorful show of spring blooms.

From the first pop of snowdrops to the fade of the last flower, spring bulbs radiate dazzling whites, brilliant yellows, vibrant reds, and lots of colors in between.

University of Illinois (https://web.extension.illinois.edu/gpe/case5/c5facts1.html) describes a bulb as "a promise of a plant to come. These 'packaged plants' each have a complete miniature plant inside along with its food." The bulb is a food storage unit and inside is a miniature plant complete with leaves, stem, and a small flower bud.

Like all perennials they need care and feeding. Here’s what to do and when.

While blooming, mark their spot with a plant stake noting type and color. (Plant stakes are 10/$1 at the Dollar Store. https://www.dollartree.com/garden-collection-plastic-plant-labels-10ct-packs/213330). This will help when you later divide the flowerless bulbs.

After blooming, cut the faded bloom stems near the bottom. Leave the green foliage. It will send energy and nutrients below ground to the bulb. When the plant goes dormant over winter, the bulb will continue to store the energy until spring when warmer weather urges it to regrow and flower.

Leave the green foliage. It will send energy and nutrients below ground to the bulb. When the plant goes dormant over winter, the bulb will continue to store the energy until spring when warmer weather urges it to regrow and flower.

Once the foliage has turned yellow or brown and died back, cut the plant down to 1”. If you need to divide the bulbs, be sure to have them marked.

Penn State Chester County Master Gardeners (https://extension.psu.edu/programs/master-gardener/counties/chester/how-to-gardening-brochures/bulbs-corms-rhizomes-and-tubers) note that “signs that bulbs need to be divided are overcrowding, multiple stems, and declining flowers.”

Spring flowering plants are best divided and replanted in the fall. If you need to divide them in the spring, you may replant them immediately or store them.

When digging to divide, be careful not to cut or damage the bulb. Dig down and around to get a large clump. Gently brush or wash off the soil to expose the small bulblets. Carefully remove the bulblets from the mother plant, then replant them separately with the tips facing up. They are small now but space them out saving the need to divide again in the next year or two.

If you chose to divide the bulbs and store them instead of replanting immediately, remove all the soil, lay them out individually, discarding any damaged or diseased bulbs. Let them air dry away from sunlight for several days then store in a net or mesh bag. Then store in a mesh bag or some dry peat moss or vermiculite. Keep them in a ventilated in a cool, dark spot and check periodically during the summer, to make sure they are not rotting or drying out. Replant the following fall.

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I Write: Tiny Tears

At our monthly Writing is Fun meetings we decide a prompt for writing for the next meeting. Length is set at 2 pages so we can read them at the meeting. There is quite a diversity of writing. Some are real life recollections, some fictional vignettes, and sometimes there's a poem. This is a real life recollection.

The prompt for September 2025 was - You inherit a mystery box from a long lost relative. What do you hope to find in it?

With all the spam phone calls nowadays I don’t answer the phone unless the caller-ID has a name. The voice mail on my phone is from Robert King, an attorney, asking me to call him and leaving a number.

Mr. King tells me it was difficult to find me as he only had my maiden name and a very old address. I learn that my Aunt Alice has left me something in her will. Alice and my mother had more than a falling-out when I was quite young. My mother never talked about it, but I learned from others that during a visit to Alice’s house an argument escalated, and my mother quickly swept me away home. They never reconciled.

Confirming my current address, Mr. King will send the inheritance to me. Before I can ask “how much” he needs to take another call.

A few weeks later I receive a notice to go to the post office to sign for a delivery that won’t fit in the mailbox, and I guess it isn’t a check.

The clerk hands over a box wrapped in brown paper. It is not very heavy, and the mystery box now has my interest; however, I wait until I get home to open my inheritance from Aunt Alice.

The box is on the table, and I resist shaking it. Upon opening I find wads and wads of tissue paper surrounded by bubble-wrap. I carefully unpeel the packing and there is a catch in my throat. I pull out a chair and sit down.

Slowly I reach in, and I lift it through clouds of tissue paper. Although I hadn’t seen it for – oh, how many years! – I recognize it immediately. Carefully I hold her up and she is exactly the same as when I last saw her - my Tiny Tears doll.

Tiny Tears doll before she was well-loved

There was a note enclosed.

Dearest Carol,

I know how much you love her, and I have taken care of her for you for a long time. Whenever I see her I miss you. I tried to make up with your mom, but it hasn’t worked out. I miss her so much, and I am sad that we haven’t made up yet.

I hope I can get this to you someday soon. I wish that your mom and I can be sisters again.

With lots of love, Aunt Alice 

Tiny Tears dolls had special features that other dolls did not. Yes, others had lullaby eyes that slowly closed when you tipped them down to hold in your arms or tuck into a little bed. But she also was able to take a bottle, blow a bubble pipe, and easily stand up to soap and water in the bathtub. She did not have strange nylon hair, but the top of her head was molded to include a tiny bit of hair painted light brown. The most amazing thing about Tiny Tears were the tiny tears she could cry after you fed her water then gently squeezed her stomach.

She arrived as a gift with a full layette- dressed in a onesie, with a pair of crocheted pink socks, a bottle, a bubble pipe, a washcloth, ivory soap, an extra diaper – well, she also wet herself from all that water, and, of course, Kleenex tissues for when she cried. Her body was made of rubber, and her arms and legs could raise up and down.

She was my special “lovey” and listened quietly to all my stories – some sad like when our dog, Dusty, had to be put down and others happy like a trip to the Enchanted Forest. Every night she was by my pillow as I held her tiny hand. There were times when I was hurt or sad and cried. Most often I couldn’t find the baby bottle that fit perfectly in her mouth, but she was still with me.

Over the years, as with many of us, her body deteriorated. The rubber wore out at her left elbow and right knee from being bent too much without a good joint. Band-Aids held her together, often having to be replaced, especially if they got wet. No doll hospital could provide a replacement for these and eventually she lost the bottom part of the left arm and right leg when the Band-Aids could no longer hold them. Her hair thinned as the light brown paint wore off. But I loved and needed her still. I took her almost everywhere.

And so, on the day my Mother quickly took me from my aunt’s house, she was left behind. When I asked to get her back, at first my Mother was angry but then she would cry. I stopped asking.

And here she was. Tiny tears escaped my eyes. Even in her well loved condition she was welcomed back to my heart.

POEM: When the Land Remembered

 

When the Land Remembered

Long before we planted tomatoes or mowed lawns or argued with dandelions, 

    this land had its own garden.

It wasn’t planted by people — it grew by itself, slowly, patiently,

    like a story being written by wind and rain.

In that old garden, every plant had a job.

The milkweed fed the monarchs.

The oaks raised whole families of caterpillars in their branches.

The goldenrod lit up the fall like tiny lanterns,                                                        calling bees to their last feast of the season.

Everything fit. Everything belonged.

Then people arrived with seeds from faraway places — useful plants, pretty plants, curious plants.

Plants that reminded them of home.

Some plants stayed politely.

Some took over.

And some crowded out the quiet natives who had been here since the beginning.

But here’s the good part of the story — the part where we get to be the heroes.

Every time we plant a native plant, we help the old garden remember itself.

We bring back the food the butterflies lost.

We rebuild the tiny neighborhoods where bees raise their young.

We give birds the insects they need to feed their babies.

We stitch the land back together, one root at a time.

A native plant isn’t just a plant.

It’s a piece of the original story — 

and when we plant it, the land whispers, 

                                            “Oh… I remember this.”

                                               

~ A.I. Aidan

~    ~     ~     ~

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