In her essay, "The Phantom Pruner," poet and fellow New England gardener, Jane Kenyon, uses the metaphor of a sun-filled garden to express her desire for emotional luminosity and openness:
It's not just more flowers I want, it's more light, more air for flowers, more sun for cheerfulness. A person gets her fill of shade-loving plants. She wants . . . a hundred white daffodils that glow after dusk against the unpainted boards of an old barn.
No weathered barns around here but, quite by chance, this fall's bulb order offers a small tip to Kenyon's bright vision. By the end of October, a couple of hundred daffodils had been planted: all dosed with a bit of bone meal and clumped together in groups of three or five. Over fifty white "poet's narcissus" bulbs replenished a bed next to the side of the house and another fifty narcissus "Yellow Cheerfulness" promise to bring spring sunlight along the back. The myrtle beds lining the front walk were loaded with a hundred bulbs of the perky miniature narcissus "Tete-a-Tete." After a challenging summer and fall, I am focusing simply on flowers that make me happy.
I am planning to seek my bliss indoors, too, with a slew of paperwhites, hyacinths, and amaryllises.
Order details follow.
Outdoors:
50 Narcissus "Yellow Cheerfulness" (Brent and Becky's Bulbs)
100 Narcissus "Tete-a-Tete" (Brent and Becky's Bulbs)
50 Narcissus poeticus v. recurvus (Brent and Becky's Bulbs)
5 Narcissus poeticus (Old House Gardens)
Indoors:
3 Hyacinth "Gipsy Queen" (Old House Gardens)
5 Hyacinth "Lady Derby" (Old House Gardens)
24 Narcissus "Ziva" (White Flower Farm)
1 Amaryllis "Royal Velvet" (White Flower Farm)
1 Amaryllis "Picotee" (White Flower Farm)
1 Amaryllis "Tres Chic" (White Flower Farm)
