Wow Helen...what a bummer. No, I can't say that I've been cursed with bulbs. But they sure are a lot of work getting them all planted. I can feel your pain.

I love seeing my tulips, crocus, peonies and iris all blooming in the spring. I can't seem to grow the fancy daffodils for some reason. I've tried them so many times to no avail. Anybody have luck with these?

Good luck getting some bulbs planted this fall. I hope you have a beautiful spring bloom. ;)

Wow, Helen, it seems as though you've had more than your share of bad bulb luck. Hope this is the year you get to enjoy them in all their glory.

Speaking of a curse...

I've been having strange trouble with scarlet runner beans. Last year, a friend told me about how lovely they were and asked if he could plant them where they'd grow on my fence. I said yes and he put an entire packet in the ground, along ten feet of fence. He planted them in April, way too early (I didn't realize what he was out there doing until he came in and announced he was done). Most of them rotted in the ground. I assumed they all would and started to dig up the area in May. I discovered that three plants had made it, but one was already nibbled to the ground by a rabbit or other critter. In digging up the area to plant other stuff, I accidentally killed another. The last one struggled for a long time and eventually produced three beans. Only three.

So this year I planted those three beans. All came up. I accidentally bumped one and it freakishly broke in half and died. Another had the growing tip damaged (I'm not sure by what) and never made it. The last grew slowly... so slowly... and produced three seed pods. I zealously guarded these pods against husband and children, reminding them every time we picked beans not to pick THOSE pods. Leave them be, let them ripen.

Last week I cleaned out all the other plants growing on that fence and cut down the sunflowers, etc. I didn't have time to do it neatly, so there were a lot of stragglers. We had a house sitter over - the same friend who had wanted to plant the scarlet runners in the first place. We were in a hurry when we left and I didn't give any specific instructions about the garden (not that I'd even thought about it). When we came back and I was unpacking, I saw my garden basket near the door had four bean pods in it and one was a scarlet runner pod! I asked him, "What happened to the other two? This was on a plant with two other pods." He said, "What? Oh, well, the other ones didn't look very good. I think squirrels got at them. I threw them away."

I have a bad squirrel problem, but I've grown beans for two years and I have yet to have a squirrel (or anything else) eat the bean pods. Hoping the squirrels had only chewed on the pods and there were a few seeds left, I asked where he'd thrown them away. He said the trash. So I looked. All I found was carefully hulled pods, hulled by a human. When he saw that I was looking, he said, "I just threw the beans out. They were kind of dry and hard."

This is a nice guy. Were it nearly anyone else, I would suspect malice. But he's dumb and nice and well-intentioned. I took a deep breath. "Okay. Where did you throw the beans?" He said (and I'm not exaggerating or kidding here), "Just out in the back yard. I was hoping a squirrel or a bird might eat them... I'm sorry."

I bought a flashlight (my old one was dead) and searched. I found three. This morning I found two more after carefully raking the area where I'd found the other three. That's probably all there were, as they weren't big pods. There are three beans still in the pod that was in the basket. I imagine that he thought he'd help finish cleaning off the fence and noticed a few bean pods. After that, it's sheer human perversity and the absurdity of life. Was he bored and decided to shred the pods, then tossed the seeds when he was done? If so, why carry the hulls inside to put in the trash? Did he think that the dried out pods wouldn't make good snap beans (I haven't grown dry beans so he hasn't seen that)?

It's just weird. Plain weird. It's not a big loss to me, as I could just buy a packet of seeds and be as well off, maybe more. Plus the scarlet runners are apparently very accident-prone and don't grow well where I'm planting them. But it was bizarre that after two years of coddling, most of my seeds get tossed out so "a squirrel or a bird might eat them" by a well-meaning helper.

Yup...you are cursed by those beans. I wonder if they are anything like hyacinth beans? All I got off those was foliage, no flowers, no pretty pods...not quite as tenacious as you are though, just never planted them again. Helen.