EDITORletter

Your editor (front, all the way at left) with other members of the Silver Spring Garden Club in Jesup Blair Park in Silver Spring, MD.

Planting Bulbs and Hope

The Silver Spring Garden Club recently planted 600 ‘Carlton’ daffodil bulbs at the Jesup Blair Park on the Maryland-DC border, purchased from Brent & Becky’s Bulbs. This annual club tradition honors war veterans. Over the years, the club has planted several thousand bulbs at the park and a number return each spring, but we still add more because the park maintenance mowing cycle affects how many are successful in coming back. Some years are better than others. We picked daffodils in a recreation of a historic club planting of 10,000 of them at this park in the 1940s. We also chose daffodils because they are deer- and rabbit-resistant!

Planting these bulbs is an exercise in hope. Hope for the future and the promise of spring. Hope that the community members will enjoy the blooms and not damage them. Hope that the winter rains and snows will be sufficient, but not so frequent and strong as to rot the bulbs.

Note that the nine club members shown here who volunteered to do the planting are not “spring chickens.” Despite aching backs and creaking knees, the planting session was accomplished by this small group in under an hour! Many hands make light work, as they say. (I also realize that I look like a stuffed sausage in the photo above thanks to the five layers of clothing I was wearing that day in the unseasonable cold temperatures.)

Planting spring-blooming bulbs in the fall is a promise for the future!

Sincerely,

Kathy Jentz, Editor/Publisher, Washington Gardener KathyJentz@gmail.com

Credits

Kathy Jentz Editor/Publisher Washington Gardener 826 Philadelphia Ave. Silver Spring, MD 20910 Phone: 301-588-6894 kathyjentz@gmail.com www.washingtongardener.com

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Volume 17, Number 9 ISSN 1555-8959 © 2022 Washington Gardener All rights reserved. Published monthly.

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