Tulips and Tomatoes

One of my favorite things about April in my garden is the abundance of bright red tulips!  I started out with a border of tulips around the white picket fence that surrounds our front yard. The east side of this area gets more shade, so these tulips are pretty much in their prime right now.  The south and west sides of this area get a lot of sun, bloom earlier, and are now past their prime for the season. Our heavy clay soil adds to the fact that the tulips on those sides don't always do so well.  I normally leave the bulbs in the ground all year around, but one year I decided that too many of the bulbs had died out and they were unevenly spaced, so I dug up all of the bulbs and transplanted them into the back yard where they have flourished in spite of the grass invading their space:

  The following year I returned many of the bulbs to the front fence area, but it's looking like I need to add a few more this year sometime.  

It's still a bit early to plant our tomatoes outside without protection, but I couldn't resist buying a two pack of Moscow tomatoes last week.   It was a few days before I had time to get them planted outside, but the other night I managed to get them settled just as the sun was setting:

Unfortunately one of the plants (the one in the back of the photo) got a bit smooshed either by the cat or someone's shoe, so it isn't looking too good right now.  Hopefully it will perk up and survive!  We had a rather fierce wind storm pass through last night with a bit of rain and cooler temps.  I hadn't had time to set up the wall-o-waters or the plastic covered tomato cages that my dear neighbor swears by, but I was able to cover them up with some nice big white buckets topped off with a brick or two.  It's supposed to warm up a bit more tomorrow, so I'll uncover them in the morning, and next month we'll plant some more.  There's nothing better than home grown tomatoes!!