When Dave and I moved to our house 30 years ago, the daffodils were already here at the end of the driveway. And they're still right there. They've been mowed down and run over many, many times.
A memorable one was when my mom got her car hung up on the giant rock we had next to the daffodils to keep the garbage truck out of the yard. My guys had to lift her car up and off the rock. I have no idea how she managed that, but we had to wait for spring to see the daffodils again. They didn't survive the melee. And in the spring, there they were— for more punishment. Year after year.
For the most part, I don't bother with flowers. I'm very much involved with the big vegetable gardens we have every year, but flowers, not so much. If you can't eat it, what's the point of growing it?
That's not to say I never tried growing flowers at the house. When we first moved in, our son was only four and we had septic tanks for the very first time. I was scared witless that he'd somehow manage to move one of those tank lids that outweighed him by over a hundred pounds and fall in and drown.
My attempts to explain my irrational fears to a four-year-old were futile. So, Dave put in a flowerbed with flowers, mulch, crushed white gravel, the works. It was way easier to tell a kid to stay out of the flowers than explain septic tanks.
We were in our early 30s then. I wish we had had the forethought to put in perennials instead of annuals. I just recently learned the difference. Last year, for the first year in a whole lot of them, I cleaned out the former flower bed by the tanks and planted flowers. Put in new mulch and everything. How pretty it was — for a hot minute — and then it was gone. No more pretty flowers and none popped up in the spring. Well, none in the flower bed, just the daffodils at the end of the driveway.
OK, so perennials from now on, but I never remember to do that until I see the daffodils in the spring. Until this year, that is. We bought some bulbs for summer flowers. What a nightmare planting them was. The package says to plant them eight inches deep. I guess that's to keep the squirrels from digging up a buffet. Otherwise, I don't know why I had to dig to China through eight inches of annual deposits of crushed white gravel from back in the day.
At least I'll only have to do it once. Or maybe twice. It's possible when I see the flashes of color from the summer flowers it will remind me to plant bulbs in the fall. And maybe not. Maybe all I'll get is these beautiful daffodils at the end of the driveway. I'm OK with that.