A Moment of Silence...

[Taps playing on a lone trumpet]


Well, as mentioned in my December update, I did get out one day in mid-December after we had gotten a few frosts and I thinned out the cannas and left the ones I wanted to grow next year in the ground.
In their usual form they did multiply like crazy and I basically had my whole edible garden covered in them! I didn't get a picture, though :-(

I then left them out in the garden to dry because I just don't have space inside.

And then it rained.

And finally when there was threat of heavy freezing a few days later, I ran outside, scooped them up and dropped them in a 5 gallon bucket which they overflowed and so the rest just sat on a towel on the floor inside the door.

Several weeks later and we're cleaning the downstairs "slash" room (laundry slash workshop slash mudroom slash gardening center slash...etc.) and I finally got my summer bulbs into mesh bags, hung them in the utility closet which stays a few degrees colder than the rest of the house and went to do the same to the canna bulbs in the bucket and ... ew!

Guess what happens when you put damp bulbs still covered in dirt into a bucket and leave them there for weeks where air can't get to them?

Mmmmm-hmmm. Grossness, that's what.

They were all fuzzy and awful. And it was 10 degrees outside (ok, maybe 30, but all cold feels like 10 to me!) So I just chucked them on top of the compost pile, covered them with leaves and their stalks/leaves I'd previously chopped down and there they shall stay to rot away or - knowing my history - hopefully start to sprout a bit!

It's no great loss because I had to severely thin them out and have nowhere else to put them. I was just going to do my annual "who wants canna bulbs?!" and try to get rid of them that way.
But I hate, hate, hate wasting growing things! (Which has absolutely nothing to do with letting a 30 foot vine grow in my front yard...ahem.)

Plus, my coworker had offered to do vandalism gardening with me (she had a far nicer name for it which I can't remember...but I think mine is appropriate: you just find out of the way places along roads, near woods, etc. and plant bulbs and voila! Beautiful! How on earth did THOSE lovely growing things just spring up randomly in the woods?! No idea!!)

Alas.

Rest in peace, canna bulbs.

Though, I fully expect at least a partial resurrection come spring-time!
Stay tuned.