Spring promise

Last autumn, I issued a self-denying ordinance. I would not allow myself to plant a single solitary tulip in the garden, except in the large terrace pots. This was because the varieties planted in the open ground had become hopelessly muddled over time, so I wanted to clear the borders of them. We are often told that bulbs are envelopes of secret spring promise buried in autumn, or some such thing; however, the adamantine imperative of a spring-flowering bulb’s requirement for a period of dormancy in summer means you cannot, to save your life, find them in July or August, when you need to dig them up. (The old advice to remove tulips soon after flowering, when you could still find them, and bury them elsewhere, for replanting in the borders in autumn, always seemed to me doomed to failure; you can hardly expect a bulb to plump up and initiate buds ready to flower the following year, if it has had its roots torn out of the ground at just that moment when it needs them most.)