bulbs for Patty and Bo Pilgrim Cancer Center

Around the first of October a local cancer support group was formed to help pay for cancer screening for those unable to afford these high costs. Their first fund raiser was to get daffodil bulbs donated to the group and then they planned to “sell” these for $5.00 a bulb and you could either take the bulb and plant it in a public area your self or you could donate the bulb back to the group to be used in a mass planting around our new cancer center.
I already had most of our blooming size daffodils back in the ground or sold by this time but I donated 100 Trevithian and 100 n. Papyrus for their fund raiser. The project grew a LOT more rapidly than anyone expected and within a month donations of daffodils were piling up.
They had expected folks to buy the bulbs and go plant them. By the first of November it was obvious that people would rather donate the bulbs back to the Pilgrim Cancer center……let “someone else” plant the bulbs.
About 30 people showed up for the big photo shoot to kick off the beginning of the daffodil planting project yesterday at 1 PM. There were about 1,200 daffodils and about 100 tulips to plant. We had about 40 shovels and trowels, dibble bars and bulb planters…..
Anyway as you can see it was a fabulous sunny day with temperatures into the middle 60’s *F or about 18*C. By the time I slowed down enough to take a picture at 2 PM we already had about 1,000 of the bulbs in the flower beds and our work force had dwindled to the original 8 members of our Master Gardener group that volunteered yesterday and three of the women from the support group. We finished up planting by 2:30 PM.
The daffodil varieties that were donated to the group this year from various garden centers were: Ice Follies, King Alfred (these had pictures of Carlton on the bags) Sempre Avanti, Red Devon, Dutch Master (about 10% of these were rotten or had dried up from basal rot.)
We have teamed up with a photography group and in Feb. & March they will come to our daffodil fields and take pictures of daffodils in bloom. There will be a photo contest and the 13 best daffodil photos will be donated back to the cancer support group to be sold as prints or used as a calendar for another fund raiser for them in the off season. Keith Kridler Mt. Pleasant, Texas