Fwd: Round and stuffed! and determing the gold and white ribbon winn…

Which is why I swap for ’em, scrounge for ’em, and look for ’em in the bargain bins at the end of the planting season. I’ve even acquired Historics (my personal favorites) by offering to help elderly/busy friends and neighbors with their overgrown blind clumps in exchange for a portion of the bulbs. Last June I got over 100 Polar Ice (still in the process of identification as once I planted them in my yard on a well drained slope in full sun from where they’d been planted in a location where they’d been in shade for all but four hours of the day and what came up in my yard looks a lot different!) that way. Hopefully next year I’ll be able to start swapping from that batch! Other times I’ve gotten lucky and snagged treasures from in front of the developer’s bulldozer when an old house or farm because I happened to be at the right place at the right time. I’m to the point where friends know I”m interested so when they see something happening, or know somebody’s changing their landscaping scheme and planning to throw away perfectly good plants/bulbs, they give me a call to let me know or grab stuff for me!  Granted, I do not show and don’t intend to start in the near future (I’m too busy, and just enjoy having rather than displaying) but you can’t deny I’ve got daffodils as well as heirloom irises, peonies, snowflakes, and now roses (I’m teaching myself how to do cuttings with mixed results).

One man’s trash may be another man’s treasures! (Or woman’s, for that matter.)
Chris