Bulbs Have Arrived...

The Early crop of Fall bulbs is now awaiting customers at your neighborhood plant or home improvement stores. Too bad they're rarely labeled correctly, and you get to wait months to figure out what they will actually look like. I mostly have this problem with daffodils. I buy specific varieties because I like what they're supposed to look like, and months later they aren't that variety at all... However every time I buy a bagged Astilbe it turns out to be white, even if I bought a pink variety. Same thing happens with Bleeding Hearts. This year I'm trying Bearded Irises. When I was in Washington DC in may it was that time of year, and they were blooming everywhere. So far I've bought 5 varieties to try out, Vita Fire, Color Tart, Full Tide, and Night Edition. I might return the Full Tide, as pics I've seen online look almost nothing like the pic on the package, another pet peeve of mine. I ended up potting these up rather than tossing them out into the garden yet. This year starting with the spring roots and bulbs I potted everything that was a perennial. I got bargain plants weeks after the sales, and potted them up to survive the winter and grow some actual roots. 5 or 6 astilbes, 3 or 4 day lily types, I tried to get more purple cornflowers, but only one of them is a cone flower. One of the others is a balloon flower judging by the actual flower I got on a little pathetic stem. I also got a number of nursery propagated wildflowers for $1 each. All the Christmas Ferns from that group came up, the other ferns didn't, but I dug them up a few weeks ago, and none had turned to mush, so likely they will come up next year. I also got a few trilliums, two trout lilies and a jack in the pulpit, which as far as I could tell might as well have been dirt, but I'll give them till next summer to do something. I also picked up some Dutch Iris bulbs this year, and I'm trying Iris reticulata again. Last year I had a few, but after they bloomed something carried them off. Never saw them again. Hopefully I'll place them better this year.