It was cold and rainy all weekend up here in the Frozen North, so I didn't get a chance to work in the garden. But She Who Puts Up With Me suggested that I take the afternoon off to get the yardwork done.

It sounded like a good idea to me, especially since today was everything the weekend wasn't: sunny, dry, and very pleasant. So I took the opportunity to finish planting the bulbs I bought.

This year, I'm experimenting with something new: fall-blooming bulbs. Fall bloomers are a lot like the more familiar spring-bloomers except that (as the name implies) they bloom in the fall. There were some very nice fall bloomers in our garden when we lived in Illinois years ago (planted by the previous owners), and they were always a delight.

Unfortunately, there are not as many choices among fall blooming bulbs, and about the only ones I could find which are winter hardy this far north are fall-blooming crocuses. Don't get me wrong: crocuses are among my very favorite flowers, blooming as they do at the very beginning of spring.

But we've found crocuses hard to keep in our yard, because the deer and rabbits see them as delightfully colored little canapes, just right for snacking on. Too often we've had a flowerbed full of ripe crocus buds, only to come back the next day and find row after row of tiny little flower stumps.

That's why most of our bulb efforts have been centered around daffodils (and related flowers), which the giant suburban lawn rats (aka deer) don't like. I'm hoping that these crocuses will last a little better since they bloom in autumn rather than early spring when deer are starving.

The other challenge of fall bloomers is that they need to be planted shortly after purchase, since they want to bloom right around planting time. My bag of 100 crocus bulbs arrived with inch-long stems poking off each of the bulbs, so they were clearly ready to pop. Spring blooming bulbs tend to be more forgiving as this is the dormant season for them.

But with luck my efforts this afternoon will provide an immediate reward, with a bed full of crocuses in just a week or two.