Around about a thousand or so….Actually, I only got 500 in the ground today.  This is a continuation of the fence-line project, which is about 120 feet of fence at the top of the meadow planted out with daylilies.  Last fall I put in a 1000 crocus, but I soon determined that wasn’t enough.  So double it…  It appears that daylilies and crocus will happily coexist; but that the common violets, which hitched a ride with the daylilies, are greedy buggers.  Anywhere there was a mature clump of violets, I could count on there not being any crocus directly underneath.  And I do mean ‘clump’, violets form a solid ball of rhizomes about the size of a base-ball if they like the spot.  I am letting some violets continue, of course, for the butterflies; but I’ll be keeping a closer watch on them.  I am also planting the spine of the bed with white daffodils, of the poeticus and tazetta types.   We will see how they behave.  In the daylily/daffodil bank they have overtaken the lilies quite completely.*

Hopefully, it will eventually be a river of lavender with points of white and blue, and a rare flash of gold from a mixed crocus vernus collection.  Of course…one does wonder,  why?  There are only three people likely to see it in person. Our infrequent guests never appear in March!  But then, one doesn’t garden for that reason.

*Those however are the mystery daffodils: I dug several bushels of what I was sure were Poeticus type (judging by the very few flowers) from the woods, but were mostly clumps of over-crowded bulbs planted well over a century past….I ended up with a bank of pure gold trumpet daffodils, nary a Poeticus in sight.  They may be true King Alfreds, so no complaints.