The Bulb Garden is in the mail....
Marguerite English (Fri, 26 Jun 2009 00:08:05 PDT)

Dear all.

With all of Jen and Arnold's hard work, we are actually getting the
summer issue out a bit early! Arnold mailed issues to the overseas
and Canadian members today, and will be mailing the domestic issues
tomorrow. As always, if you are a current member of the organization,
and if you don't get your issue in a timely manner, please email Arnold
Trachtenberg or me. The issue looks great after Jen applied her magic
touches. There is an interesting article on designing one's garden with
irises, as well as some other treats that we hope you will enjoy. We
thank authors, Carolyn Craft, Judy Glattstein, Robin Hansen and Joyce
Fingerut for providing articles.

I will be sadly working on my last issue as editor during the next
couple of weeks. I will miss the creative challenge, but am looking
forward to some new challenges in my life. My daughter's company
retired her early, so she is starting a small business doing graphics
and web pages. I will be helping her with some of the technical work.
We've already been working on a couple of things. I had forgotten how
much 'midnight oil' one can burn creating and debugging software
products!

I've also been delighted to spend some extra time in my greenhouse and
garden, and have been busily packaging up the winter blooming bulbs for
the summer. Unfortunately, I was holding some of them in a spot which
was getting extra moisture, so instead of going dormant some have turned
to mush. I hate when that happens. Also last year I sent the rain
lily collection outside for the summer, and didn't get all the labels
back into the right containers, so I'm going to have to try to identify
them as they bloom later in the summer. All of the Lachenalias bloomed
this year, but none of the Romulea did. Outside, a patch of Sprekelia
had gorgeous red blooms one day and were squirrel dinner the next!
Thanks to my dog, the squirrel has since passed on to a better place;
just not quite soon enough! There's always something happening to
thwart my daydream to have the best bulb collection I can! Still, the
Bearded Irises bloomed beautifully this year, as did Dutch Iris,
Ranunculas and Daffodils. Marguerite