34 Making a Bulb Garden 
After this they are taken up and stored 
until October, when they are planted out 
just as any bulb would be. Instead of 
blossoming in the spring, however, after 
this treatment, they “lie low” until they 
are dug up in June; when lo! in place 
of the one big bulb that was planted 
there is nothing but a husk, with tiny 
little bulbs clinging to it on every side, 
to the number of 25 or 30. These little 
chaps are picked off and set out in the 
fall; and it is these which require from 
four to six years to reach the full ma- 
turity demanded. They are dug up and 
stored each summer and put into the 
ground again in the autumn — which is a 
labor of great patience and painstaking 
love. The storehouses are wonderful 
places, with their racks upon racks of 
carefully tended, drying, dormant bulbs. 
But this is a side of the industry which 
seldom is considered, and has nothing to 
do with our bulb gardens here. Only it 
appeals — when it is noted ; and every 
little bulb, or big one either, takes on a 
