Sunday we planted, Zo and I. There were a number of tulip and daffodil bulbs leftover from last year I just never got around to planting, so on Sunday we endeavored to fix that.
Will they sprout? Who knows. I dug divots with the bulb tool, and Zo plopped in the bulbs and covered them back up. As she worked she said, “Good night, little bulb. Pleasant dreams. I hope you grow nice and tall.”
Next, we cleaned up the square foot garden, which had gone to weeds and monster radishes and seedy cucumbers. We pulled the sunflower and propped up a couple flowers still clinging to life, chopped back the swiss chard that Will Not Die. Then I made holes, dragged out my seed library, and together we picked out some cool weather seeds: broccoli, cauliflower, tatsoi, mizuna, and some shorty carrots.
Will they sprout? Again, who knows. We are very laissez-faire about the garden here in the Paddock household.
(Aside: I just typoed that as laissez-fairy and I really want to follow that line of thought but can‘t. I have points to make, people.)
As a final act of gardening, I pulled up what I call Zoe’s zinnia (Z. elegans Zoe), now in its second and unexpected year. The first year she brought it home as a gift from daycare. I somehow nurtured into a three-foot-tall zinnia plant and it rewarded us tremendously. From there, a windblown seed went off into our garden, and we wound up with a pleasant surprise: an even bigger zinnia. It bloomed all through summer, delightfully and abundantly. Only now has it finally let go, and so I have sent it off to compost heaven.
But before that, I crumbled the dried flower heads and let the seeds drift off into my garden. I also took two of the heads and put them aside in our sunroom to more deliberately preserve the seeds. My goal is to keep growing Zonnias year after year, until I can’t.
Will they sprout? Who knows.
Plant them and find out, I say.
