The sound I dread...

Today I heard a sound that every gardener, at this point of late winter, dreads to hear:

It was a faint, very faint, scrunching sound, underfoot.

There might have been a tiny bit of sensation, as well: a sort of gentle, soft 'give' underfoot.

I was raking leaves at the time: yes, I know that we did all that autumn stuff a couple of months back, and yes, this particular garden was cleared of leaves - several times, actually - back before Christmas.

This morning, I went in to find that the Cotoneaster, usually a reliable evergreen one, had shed about 50% of it's leaves all over the lawn. So I raked them up.

And as I was doing so......

Yes, you got it: I trod on the daffodils.

Yikes!

Sorry, guys!

My only defence is that because they were covered in leaves, I didn't see them. At all. Even after I'd trodden on them, I didn't immediately see them - I gazed around the lawn vacantly, thinking "What was that, then?" before looking downwards.

Oops.

Hopefully, they will recover - they didn't actually break, they got bent over a bit. I will keep an eye on them, and see how they get on.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the garden, and talking of daffodils, how's this for an unusual sight: you know how people such as myself will tell you, of bulb planting, that for many bulbs such as daffodils, and snowdrops, it's not actually vital to plant them right way up?

That they will sort themselves out, if you get it slightly wrong?

That they have occasionally found bulbs which have been planted completely upside down, still growing and flowering beautifully?

Well, how's this for an extreme example:

Yes, it's a daffodil bulb which is growing completely OUT of the soil! 

I imagine, as it's in a pot rather than in a bed, that one of those pesky squirls (that's 'squirrels' pronounced in a Yankee red-neck manner, with an underplanting of 'danged varmints') (and when I say 'underplanting' I mean sub-text, of course) has dug it up, but then left it on the surface.

So it started to grow - and the growing shoot has pushed its way into the soil, instead of pushing a way out of the soil!

In case you think this is an optical illusion (it isn't), here's another picture, showing me gently pulling it out of the soil, and you can see how much shoot was underground:

Having gently extracted it, I then made a hole - with due care for the other bulbs in the pot - and shoved it as far down as I could.

Hopefully, it will make a full recovery. But it's not often you find daffodils growing underground....

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