gardening for me (and also maybe some other people)

And ... as promised, the first harvest of the season:


It seems a bit early to be harvesting anything (especially since my brain, for some reason, still insists on thinking that it's April), but the rhubarb that we pulled was undeniably ready: thick and very bright red. I got a good half-dozen last night, and I'm going to pull a few more later this weekend for another friend.

I'm glad that I have friends who like rhubarb. I don't, actually, and it seems such a waste to not harvest it.

I cut the yellow tulips last night, too. It's always hard for me to do that — I know that other gardeners grow flowers specifically to be cut, but I just can't get away from the thought that, if I cut them, they won't be growing any more. (I am hoping a plethora of gladiolas and peonies will help with this.) It's especially hard with tulips, because there's only one per stem and they only last for so long.

But the thing is, I realised that the ones I cut — from the backyard — were half-hidden behind other plants (like the raging daylilies), and anyway, I couldn't enjoy them most of the time — we don't go out into our backyard very often, and even though our kitchen sink overlooks it, it's usually dark when I'm doing dishes or glancing idly out. Their being outside was not contributing much, if anything, to my enjoyment of the garden — whereas I do believe they look absolutely adorable on my dining table:


I've just got the stems, leaving the foliage to gather nutrients for the bulb so that they'll recur next year. (The previous owner planted these, so I've got good reason to believe them to be annuals.) I think it's a good compromise. After all, what's the point of gardening if I don't enjoy the flowers?
...
I need to make a decision as to how I'm going to map out the garden soon. I need to figure out a way to keep track of where the tulips are, and which cultivars, so that I don't accidentally dig naturalizing bulbs up as I'm planting more in October. (And I will definitely be planting more.) There's two possibilities: one, I draw a map in my little gardening notebook. Or, I stick little wooden tags in the ground — the downside to that, of course, is that they will be terribly obvious (especially after the foliage dies back). On the other hand, it's much more precise — the map would only give me a vague-ish sort of idea.

(Of course, the two are not mutually exclusive, and I would be paranoid in any case about losing the tags, so really I suppose it's either the map and the tags, or just the map alone.)

Thoughts, anyone?