When we got down south in November, the ground was bare, the trees naked, the garden slumbering or perhaps dead, no way to tell in the dark months. Along the rambling front porch a patch of dirt with two old crookedy lopsided but suprisingly stalwart evergreen holly boxwoods in it, the two wide glorious recently re-ju-jued raised beds by the side porch more bald dirt (allow me to pause here and say, yes, my farmhouse has TWO PORCHES, and neither one of them is a fire escape), the topsoil stained permanently kind of red by the Albemarle clay. Then the world turned round and warmed up a little and she started to stir, sweet and ancient bulbs coming back every year for twenty years, or maybe a hundred. First the crocuses, then daffodil, and in a mad tumble hyacinth, grape hyacinth, tubery iris, and a rush of tulips, polka dotted strewn willy nilly like stars across the two 10×10 beds. And just when we can tell what they are, we decided to move them all, spade deep and turn soil delicately down down searching for the heart and root and oh so carefully extract like a tooth or a treasure. The plan to turn the wide side beds over to the kitchen garden, make the dirt strip in front of the house (where the dirt fizzled in the spring warmth), into a bulb paradise. And so we dig.
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