Every year, for the past seven or eight years, I’ve been planting Crocus corms and glory-of-the-snow bulbs in my back lawn.

This year, I planted 1,000 crocus corms, Crocus tommasinianus and another 500 glory-of-the-snow bulbs, Chionodoxa sardensis.

It took me about two and a half hours, split between two planting sessions.

I am a planting machine.

I  kneel on a mat and grab five corms/bulbs because that’s how many I can hold without dropping one. Then I stab a hole in the ground with the rockery trowel, drop a corm/bulb behind the trowel, pull out the trowel and move on to the next one.

Repeat every five corms/bulbs until you are finished!

Over the seven or eight years since I’ve been planting crocuses and other flowers in the lawn, I’ve planted about 1,000 per year, give or take. Sadly, I don’t have a complete record to know exactly how many I’ve planted in my back lawn, but I would guess around 8,000 or so crocuses and 2,000 or so glory-of-the-snows.

I know that some come back every year, and I suspect a few disappear each year. Some get eaten by chipmunks or squirrels, but I plant enough that there is no way they can eat them all. I also do not use weed killers on the back lawn because it would kill the flowers.

Yes, that means I have dandelions, clover, wild strawberries, plantain, violets and who knows what else growing in the lawn, but I think it is worth it to see the crocuses and glory-of-the-snow blooming in early spring.

In all the years of just randomly planting corms and bulbs all over the lawn, this is the first year I’ve accidentally dug up a corm from a previous year, and it happened about 10 minutes before I finished planting.

I’m looking forward now to spring!