Now That’s a Crazy Idea

You will never guess what I did Sunday afternoon.

It wasn’t your typical Ground Hog Day activity.

While the rest of the country was preparing for Super Bowl parties – my husband and I planted bulbs.

Yes bulbs. As in spring flowers.

Yes, the ground is frozen.

Yes, there was 4 inches of snow on top.

And yes, I realize that this is an activity that most real gardeners took care of last fall. But I’m not a real gardener. I’m a real wife and mom who likes to pretend to garden and sometimes has to fly by the seat of her pants.

We had every good intention last fall. We extended the flower bed and laid out a new one. We got several bags of top soil at a rock bottom clearance price. We even bought almost 400 super cheap bulbs on clearance.

But life happened and we just never got the top soil out of the bags and in the beds. So the bulbs never made it out of their bags.

Finally – the boys just filled both bare beds with the leaf mulch they bagged up just as the snow started to fly.

My 400 bulbs were not planted.

And the top soil was still in bags – now frozen solid.

But just when it seemed like all was lost for this season – my amazing husband had a plan.

What if we raked the mulch back to expose the frozen bare ground? Then we could lay the bulbs out on the ground, put the frozen bags of top soil on top of them, and push the mulch over it all.

What a crazy idea?!

So we did it.

We planted 400 bulbs in less than 45 minutes – and that included pushing the wheelbarrows of frozen top soil through the snow from the machine shed to the flower beds.

We cut the plastic off the bricks of frozen dirt and laid them out like a puzzle.

And boom! We were done!

But will it work?

Time will tell.

But it does my heart happy to know that I planted a little hope for spring even as the snow is flying.

And we might have given the neighbors something to talk about. Again.

Photos by Anne Burgess and  Pam Brophy.