This time next year

The last flower bed is sorted out, in spite of the stifling heat wave hanging over us.  We screened a lot of dirt and moved a lot of plants in a couple hours each evening, since the last time I've mentioned gardens.

Starting at the steps, we dug up more than four hundred colchium bulbs--our dad's fall blooming crocus. Jan figures she brought about forty bulbs from the old house, and planted them in front of the porch rail. 

As we unearthed them we sorted them first into a bucket.  When it was full Laura planted the bulbs in a section of the other front garden.  The bucket refilled; Laura planted more.  Over a hundred in the last sweep of the other garden.

The next bucket full went into a grocery bag.  So did the next. Hot, dirty, sweaty, Hamilton on shovel grew careless with the shovel, slicing into bulbs.  Hot, dirty, sweaty, grandma did not mention it. We filled another bucket one afternoon before we knocked off.  We went back out in the evening to continue excavating the damn things. We'd left off in the vicinity of that third grassy sidewalk crack. There were exactly three more!

Hamilton moved Aunt Laura's miniature iris into the ramp angle and along the bottom of the deck. Jan, Laura and I picked out ten perennials to plant and have fill in the next couple of summers.  Laura and Hamilton planted them, Hamilton put down the first mulch layer.  We leaned on our literal and figurative shovels and admired our work.

And the bulbs?  Laura and I packed them fifteen to a paper bag.  We stuck on the label Jan wrote about our dad and the bulbs that cost ten percent of a week's pay.  We've given them away to family and friends and friends of friends.  There are four bags left on the bench, and I know I have homes for them.