This, THIS is the exact time of year to keep your eye out at the grocery store, at Trader Joe’s, at Target, for POTTED TULIPS. They are available right before Easter and not at any other time of year. It will be six sprouted tulip bulbs in a pot of dirt covered by a bright-pastel paper sleeve, and they will sell for $5 or $6 or $7, and you should not hesitate! You should BUY THEM, and use them to decorate your interior house! Don’t buy just one pot, if you can afford more! Buy two or three! or six or seven!
Because then, when they have wilted, you should bury them in your yard (or anywhere else: a roadside area! a park! a friend or family member’s yard as a surprise!), absolutely casually: just dig a casual roundish hole in your yard (or wherever!—but if it’s not your property, BE QUICK!) with a shovel, and then grab the six stems in a handful ’round the necks and use them to pull the whole soil clump out of the pot, and chunk the whole pot’s worth of soil/bulbs into the hole, and tuck/pat the soil around the base of the wilted stems as if you are doing a good job planting wilted flowers (this will make sure you are at least planting the bulbs right-side-up). It is in no way the right time of year to plant tulips; you are merely doing your part to avoid putting them in the landfill! And maybe that is all that will happen: they will gently decompose and return to the earth whenst they came. Or else they will be eaten by squirrels/chipmunks.
line-up of wilted potted daffodils/tulips waiting for me to go out with a shovel; generally they wait several weeks and then I get a surge of inspiration and plant them all at once
Or maybe!!: not!! And then, when they come up next spring, you will enjoy your FREE BONUS SURPRISE TULIPS!! I currently have many dozens of casually-buried potted tulips coming up in my yard, some from last year and some from the year before that and some from the year before that—and I cannot express how happy a thing that is. FREEEEEEEE TULIPS!! Last spring I got carried away and bought too many pots so as an experiment I planted two extra pots’ worth down by the mailbox, thinking there was NO WAY they would overcome the salt/sand near the roadside. And yet: here we are, it’s March and I see two distinct pot-shaped sections of tulips coming up!!! by the mailbox!!
ONE SURPRISE TULIP CLUMP COMING UP
…I have bought five more pots of them this year so far. AT LEAST TWO MORE POTS’ WORTH are joining the ones down by the mailbox!!
This is absolutely delightful!
Perfect smile, right there, just when I was tired. Thank you!
Surprise tulips! How charming!
I hope they bring you – and your community – lots of joy.
Here in the UK – I do not know if elsewhere – they sell little pots of the miniature daffodills/narcissi (can’t remember the correct name) to have in your house, very cheap, throughout late January/February. I always get some because they are so cheering at that time of year. And then once they have finished flowering I plant them in the garden, and now after a few years I have multiple little clumps of flowers that come up, a little later than the in-house ones, but throughout February usually, and it is also so cheerful! The pots are usually £1-2 to start with so it has been an excellent investment over time. And they die down before I want to put out my summer bedding plants so it really is like a little extra bonus just at the time of year when I need it.
YES, we get the little pots of narcissus/daffodils here too! The only reason I don’t buy those is that they are not as good indoors for households with cats dumb enough to chew on them, which we are/have. But they are FAR FAR BETTER for planting outdoors, because they are resistant to many of the animals that like to eat tulip bulbs!
I did this once with a pot of hyacinth we got as a condolence gift when Beth’s father died in 2011. It had three plants in it and for years they came up (one of the original three still does). It is always blooming or at least budding on the anniversary of his death in early March. It’s a lovely memorial.
Yes! I even have a neighbor who planted them when they were blooming. Sudden instant yard flowers.
What a lovely idea! So cheering.
This was a delight to read and a delight to imagine.
This is beautiful. I am going to do this, too, now!!
What a great idea! I bought bulbs last year with the intent of planting them in the fall and never did. I’ll give this a try instead.
I do this with tulips AND daffodils from my local grocery store. I usually toss them onto our deck when they die and when I am doing spring planting, I break down the bulbs and leave them in an unused flower pot to plant in the fall. I love it!!