THOUGHTS WHILE BULB CLEANING…

Cleaning and sorting bulbs has become something that I can do on automatic pilot while my mind wanders. Did you ever notice how some bulbs shed their outer, dirty layers with a twist of the wrist and the old roots pull off with no effort? They become smooth golden brown and almost glow in the sunlight. Other bulbs are harder to clean with tunics that refuse to loosen or else they totally fall off. They keep the dirt, look lumpy or have long necks and would be described in the Mitsch catalog as “rough looking bulbs”. And sadly, there are the bulbs my shovel found and chopped, or that got soft from basal rot. They find their way to the throwaway pile with the other debris. Flowers look just as pretty no matter what the bulb started like, but I really enjoy looking at the golden brown pale bulbs that have slightly darker stripes running up and down their sides.

Even with all the help of volunteers, I still like cleaning bulbs and sorting them out. I’ve ended up doing bags and bags of bulbs, some with their dead foliage still attached and clumps of dirt still sticking to their dried up roots from this spring. Looking back at cleaned bulbs in bags stacked neatly on a concrete floor or hanging from various hooks on chicken wire or barn walls makes me feel very productive. They will be sold, traded, replanted and enjoyed by lots of other people before they get to bloom again.

At this point, we are labeling individual bags for our annual exchange and the two day sale at MOBOT. We had a successful trial run at selling at a framers market, and will do more next year. The digging at Shaw’s Nature Reserve and in John Reed’s fields has produced lots of bulbs to be cleaned and sorted. Thanks to all who came out to help dig and to those who are cleaning their own bags to donate. I’m looking forward to next Sunday’s exchange and our sale the following weekend. But for now, just playing with clean and pretty bulbs as they are put back into bags has made me feel like autumn is coming soon. The hard work of digging holes, planting, mapping and labeling is in the near future. The happiness of seeing the flowers blooming will be further away, but it all starts with these clean and pretty brown bulbs.

Beth…