I recently realized I have been planting daffodils like Mark Watney planted potatoes — as if my life depended on it.

Daffodils have been my no-guilt go-to plant when I need to get some dirt under my fingernails.

With the drought, I did not water the bulbs. If it rained, the bulbs were lucky. If the bulbs died in the ground, I would never know.

This week I realized I have reached the spring-bulb saturation point.

Big-box stores hire people with master’s degrees in product placement. In this case, I bumped into a 7-foot-high metal rack filled with spring-blooming bulbs. The rack was erected in such a way that bags of bulbs fell into my cart with almost no effort on my part.

DAFFODIL PLAN

My plan was to fill two big pots with bulbs each weekend. In the spring, my plan was to have two pots of daffodils in bloom each week.

Great plan. Life changed.

The holidays came quickly. There was a weekend at the coast. We both came down with a cold.

I never planted all of those bulbs. However, the bulbs that remain can be forced indoors, including paperwhites and hyacinth.

Meanwhile, the pots filled with daffodils are blooming big-time. Just as planned, each week a new pot is ready to move near the front porch for maximum enjoyment.

Now, here’s the funny part: When I filled the pots I placed them just inside the fence on the side yard.

When I went to move them, I realized there were anemic-looking bulbs under the pots.

Poor daffodils. I completely forgot where I planted them. Now I know how squirrels feel.

Looking back, I also bought too many bulbs last year. When I ran out of pots I started tucking bulbs into every corner of the yard, and apparently along the fence in the side yard.

It’s like an Easter egg hunt to track them down — behind the fence, at the edge of the house, in the path of the weedwacker.

SPRING-PLANTED BULBS

If you missed it, Brett McGhie, Butte County Master Gardener, wrote a good article recently about bulbs we can plant right now, http://ucanr.edu/blogs/dirt/index.cfm. If you peruse his articles, you can keep scrolling and find other useful articles from people who have attended many classes to learn about gardening.

Valentine’s Day

For Valentine’s Day, my beau took me to the movies, but we opted out of the whole dress-up and dine-out routine.

If you think about it, Valentine’s Day is the last night I would want to spend a lot of money on a good meal. I don’t want to squeeze in a reservation, feel hurried by the wait staff and suffer through glares from people who want me to eat faster.

We’ll go out one night this week when we can chow down in a leisurely way.

A few weeks ago my guy announced it was time to take down the Christmas tree. The needles were starting to fall onto the carpet, which he claimed is a sign the tree has outlived its usefulness.

However, the tree was a Christmas gift and I did not put up the ornaments until the day after Christmas.

“Nope,” I told him after verifying the pine needle problem.

“I’ll take it down at Valentine’s Day.”

I think I’ll stick with this tradition. Christmas trees are fairly cheap when you buy them on Christmas eve. As far as frivolous, decorative items, I think there is a need for more of these in January and February.

BEE INFORMED

Super-smart university prof. Lee Altier will host a workshop next Wednesday, 5-6:30 on how to build a bee hotel for native bees. Meet at the University Farm greenhouse classroom, at the University Farm off Hegan Lane, 311 Nicholas C. Schouten Lane. Suggested donation is $10 if you want to make a bee hotel. Otherwise the talk is free.

These bulbs were placed in hyacinth vases at different times, which theoretically means the blooms would be staggered.Heather Hacking — Enterprise-Record

I have no clue where I first heard that anticipation of taking a trip is more fun than actually taking the trip. How much this is true doesn’t really matter. Planning a trip is fun and taking a trip is fun.

Not having enough money to take a trip is just a bummer. Hearing about other people’s plans to take a trip when you can’t take a trip does not bring happiness.

Not even knowing what it might be like to take a trip is just plain sad.

This week I decided to check up on this trip happiness factoid. Is planning a trip really more fun than actually taking a trip?

I must say, I was rather shocked to find a New York Times blog (http://tinyurl.com/zoqkgtg) about a study on the quantification of happiness, trip-planning and travel.

The article goes into some depth about the overall happiness of these nearly 2,500 people in Holland who were or were not taking a trip.

There was even a research survey conducted. You can read all the details here:http://tinyurl.com/hy45mhj.

Obviously, some graduate student in the Netherlands gained happiness by finding a topic for her master’s thesis.

So here’s what I’m thinking … this happiness and anticipation isn’t isolated to trip-taking.

I’ve made a habit of finding anticipatory happiness from my plants.

This week I am quite content watching my hyacinth bulbs bloom indoors. You can also believe me when I say the entire process has been joy-filled.

One of the easiest bulbs to force this time of year is the hyacinth. I bought a jumbo bag at a big box store in August and gave half the contents to my mom.

If you can’t find any hyacinth vases at local thrift stores, you need to move more quickly next year. My mother and I spent the good part of a Sunday buying all that we could find.

A hyacinth vase is formed so that the bulb sits about a third of the way down the vase (see photo). Next, you carefully fill the vase until the water just barely touches the bottom of the bulb.

You might add half a teaspoon of water to the vase once a week.

The vase is clear, so you get the excitement of watching as the roots emerge from the bulb.

As of this week, three of the four hyacinth bulbs on my kitchen table are blooming.

They smell amazing.

No doubt, watching these bulbs over the past several weeks has brought me great joy. Was the joy of emergence more or less than the joy of actually being able to smell the flowers?

Yes. If I go back to school for my master’s degree, I’ll conduct a research project on the joy of watching plants grow.

As plants grow there is always something to anticipate. If love to garden, you probably agree that this brings joy.

LOTS TO DO DURING DRY SPELL

My buddy Dan Reidel recently wrote about El Niño, and how we should expect a break of about 10 days before the return of the rain. Read the details here,http://tinyurl.com/jqhw7vh

This is excellent news for almond farmers, who may have great weather during bloom.

For the home gardeners, its a great time to get some things done in the yard.

I’m hoping the Handsome Woodsman breaks out the weedwhacker this weekend, to beat back the grass that remains in that area we once called a lawn.

If you have some garden raised beds, this is a good time to work the soil, add compost, etc.

If you grew tomatoes last year, borrow a rototiller. Tomato hornworm pupa spends the winter in the soil. By finding and mashing those leather-looking pupae, you can cut back on summer tomato damage considerably.

You can also plant cool-weather leafy vegetables by seed, including lettuce and chard. If you work the soil really well, now is the time to plant carrots by seed.

Contact reporter Heather Hacking at 896-7758.

If you sent me an email or a note on Facebook last week, thanks so much. I’m glad the short, but heart-felt rant about privet hit a nerve. I needed the encouragement to stay the course and rekindle my resentment against privet.

It feels really good to know others also hold a grudge against certain plants.

Susan Mason sent some useful information. If you don’t know her, Susan is a plant-yanking rock star and cofounder of Friends of Bidwell Park. If you looked at her hands I’m betting she has callouses from making our favorite green places better places.

In her very helpful email, she said her group has spent 4,835 hours removing privet, at last count.

Additionally, the Mount Lassen Chapter of the California Native Plant Society “logged almost 1,500 hours of privet removal on other Chico creeks, she noted.

This is unbelievable people. Lets give these people some rest.

Here is a link to some good photos of one common type of privet, http://goo.gl/lMVwtm. If you learn what it looks like you can kill it in your yard. You can kill it if you see it growing from the crack in the pavement. You can shame your neighbors if they have privet growing as a hedge.

Today I am feeling badly that I almost let down my guard.

I had learned the evils of privet 20 years ago from my friend Shelley. However, when I moved to this new place and saw the plant growing everywhere, it seemed easier to let it grow than to spend time finding something else.

In her helpful note, Susan continued by saying that there are actually three invasive privet species in town, Ligustrum japonicum, Ligustrum lucidum and Ligustrum ovalifolium.

Now we know.

I asked Susan whether there were other plants we should really watch for.

One resource is www.plantright.org, which has the hot list of plants a lot of people don’t like. If you check this out, you’ll notice that many of these are some very lovely plants. These might even be things you would buy in a six-pack at your favorite big-box store, such as periwinkle and Pampas grass.

In her note, Susan says that periwinkle was purposefully planted in Bidwell Park in the 1950s by Boy Scouts with very good intentions.

Next time you’re in the park you may admire the pretty blue periwinkle flowers. Yet, make a mental note of how this plant can sprawl for acres and acres.

When Susan and her fellow plant pickers work in the park they also yank olives, ailanthus and hackberry.

A University of California research article, talks about how much easier it is to identify plants that might really take over, rather than waiting until those plants really take over.

When we’re done talking evil and invasive, we might as well talk about really evil and really invasive. There’s a list for that as well.

Susan helpfully pointed me (and us) in the direction of the California Invasive Plant Council, which conveniently lists plants we should learn to hate.

Here you will find English ivy, scarlet wisteria, Russian olive and edible fig.

Uh oh. I don’t know about others, but we went out of our way to procure a fig tree. I guess it wasn’t that hard. It was a volunteer in someone’s yard.

The nice thing about this second website is that alternative plants are listed.

Now I’m in the market for some fast-growing plants that will cover up a cyclone fence. Vining plants welcome.

Does anyone have some volunteer plants they are willing to donate to my cause?

Contact reporter Heather Hacking at 896-7758.