Today, I planted some lily bulbs and a dozen or so Rudbeckias I grew from seed. The lilies are a little late getting in the ground, but I hope we still get some good blooms from them this summer. I bought five bulbs of each kind at Wal-Mart about a month ago. They are:

• Stargazer – an Oriental hybrid that gets 40″ tall with purple-to-pink petals that fade to white around the edges, and
• Sugar Jewel – an Asiatic hybrid that gets 24-36″ tall with lavender blooms.

These are planted behind the Crabapple tree that is in the main flowerbed in front of our house. The Rudbeckias (Black-Eyed Susans) are also in that spot. These are the ones I called my Most Valuable Annual last summer.

I also had 28 small bulbs of a plant called Acidanthera, a part of the Gladiolus family. They get 18″ tall and have white flowers with dark brownish-purplish centers. I didn’t realize when I got them that they were a type of Gladiolus, which means they are not hardy in this climate zone. Hopefully they’ll perform well this summer, since that’s all the time they’ll get in my garden! I planted those under the birch tree by the gate to the backyard, a tough spot for most flowers, since the birch roots suck all the nutrients and water out of the soil there. I’m hoping that since bulbs have a lot of energy and nutrients stored in the bulb, they’ll perform well there despite the tough conditions.