Here’s hoping my bulbs can survive the Arctic blast

Stop all the clocks, silence the pianos and fetch me my dibber! There’s an Arctic blast on the way, and I haven’t finished planting my bulbs.

Do you know that scene from The Wizard of Oz where the farmhands scramble to lock everything down before the twister hits? That’s what we rookie gardeners will be doing well into the small hours, before an Arctic blast arrives this weekend.

Yes, I know I’ve had a garden for almost two decades but I still consider myself a novice as I don’t know all the Latin names yet. Plus many of my bulbs are still languishing in a box under the kitchen table – as I’m at risk of being caught out yet again.

Some have made it into the ground, albeit briefly, because the squirrels descended. What’s most exasperating about their predations is that squirrels don’t even like bulbs. Hence they take a single bite and discard them. The reason why they uncover them is – trust me on this, I have researched it extensively – they see some disturbed ground, assume another squirrel has buried a monkey nut there, and get stuck in.

That’s why in addition to netting, I strew leaves and other detritus on top. It’s good camouflage, even if my herbaceous border now resembles a silage pit.

But I’ve been lulled into a false sense of dilatoriness by mild November weather, and now I must away, to conceal my crocosmia corms and find a resting place for my rhizomes, before the blizzards, high winds and low temperatures hit.

The result next year – a crazy, anaphylactic blaze of clashing colours and mismatched blooms – is why the neighbours refer to my planting as “bold” and, if I’m lucky, “vivacious”.

So a word of reassurance to anyone catching sight of people like me frantically digging up sprays of dirt like a demented mole by torchlight at 4am, possibly in the driving rain: the only thing we’re burying will be bulbs.

It’s called tulip-mania for very good reason.