I'm planting daffodils on this ridiculously beautiful Saturday morning. Autumn-crisp air, clear blue skies, temperatures well on their way to the 70's. Yes, it's almost enough to make me forget and forgive the hard frost at the beginning of the month. The one that freeze-burned a dozen buds of my Anemone robustissima, which were probably only 24 hours away from opening into beautiful bloom. (But I'm not angry. Anymore.)
But it is a beautiful morning, and my husband calls over that "something blue is blooming by the chimney." I drop trowel and sprint over to find a half-dozen new blooms of autumn crocus (Crocus speciosus). Absolutely gorgeous. (The color is more violet than blue, but the description was pretty close for my husband, who's a protanope.) Such is my surprise that I clap my hands and jump up and down in the universal gesture of childish (really, it doesn't deserve the dignity to be called "childlike") delight. After a diplomatic pause, my husband quietly remarks, "I don't think I've ever seen you jump up and down like that before."
Why the surprise? Didn't I plant these bulbs with my very own hands less than a month ago? Yes, I did, but only after willfully disregarding the careful and exacting (not to mention bolded and italicized) instructions from the good folks at High Country Gardens to plant the bulbs immediately. Into the ground they finally went, and I must have promptly repressed the fact of their very existence, expecting only that the appropriate punishment for this gardener's dereliction of duty would be to have no blooms at all.
But blooming they are, and unspeakably lovely.
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