The Most Important Winter Prep

You don't have to know me very long before you realize that winter and I are not the best of friends.  I am solar-powered and grey, nasty days with no green in sight just about put me under.  But as they say, necessity is the mother of invention and so here is Shell's winter survival tip #387...

This time of year all the stores are teeming with Spring flowering bulbs.  My favorite is the Hyacinth but you can choose from any of them.  I am so excited because this year I found coral hyacinths at amazon!   queue the music and be still my heart.  *big beautiful sigh*

I love hyacinths because they smell amazing and are stubby enough that they don't tip your pots over with their height, I try to plant enough for each room in the house.  Especially bedrooms.

After you have your bulbs it's an easy process. Get yourself a bucket of compost and a few used pots and stick those critters in.

 as you can see I am breaking a sweat over this...

and once you have them planted just bury them in a flower bed or corner of your garden that will not be tilled.... this step is probably the most important step of the whole process.  Because if you have menfolk and a tiller hitched to your tractor these lil ones are in grave danger... it's like they can smell them and once in that tractor seat they head directly for the spot you sunk the pots and they just start tilling uncontrollably... The same thing happens in cornfields around here.  The first summer Andrew had a job he tilled the cornfield one night and the next morning I went out and planted the entire thing while he was at work and then I had to go work in a different spot on the farm.  I get back to see Drew out in the same dang field... tilling!  Little corn bodies were flying everywhere. 

I said (okay, it was closer to a yell)  "What you doin'??" 

he says "The dirt still looked compacted so I was tilling it again."

I say "Well, yeah, it looks compacted I just drove over it five hundred times while PLANTING IT!"

and the dude says "oh..."

People, corn will not come up after being tilled twelve inches under.. no matter how long you stand in that field and beg it to... So I ordered more seed and we had to start over.... and then miracle of miracles when we tilled for the second planting some of the first planting made it up but not in the rows, they came in all zig zaggy like a crazy person had tossed their bodies all over the place... on acounta he did...it messed with my OCD all summer... Just do yourself a favor... once you've planted unhitch the tiller. 

At any rate, here are my kids tucked safely where there is no tiller.  I am blessed to live in Missouri and in about two weeks Miss Missouri is going to dump about three feet of leaves on these little guys but if you live where leaves don't threaten to drown you every Autumn it would be best to plant them slightly deeper or cover them with a little woodchip mulch.

Then write yourself a note on your December or January calendar.  Mine reads "go get 'em"   Bring them in and in a few weeks, you will have enough Spring in your house to carry you through to better days. 

In the Spring you can plant the bulbs in your yard or plant the whole pots again for the next year. However,  if you leave them in pots be sure to divide them every few years so that you don't crowd your bulbs.

And that's it, Ladies, adding beauty to our homes by looking toward the future.  Wishing you a blessed Autumn! <3