https://tonytomeo.com/2018/11/10/six-on-saturday-tangly-cottage-gardening-journal/

This link is to the original post to ‘Six on Saturday’ that was about the four dozen or so Gladiolus papilio bulbs that the author of Tangly Cottage Gardening Journal sent to me at the end of last October.

I tried to not get too eager about these new bulbs. I sort of watched their site shortly after planting them, just to make sure they were safe. Once they were planted, nothing else was done there. There was a bit of frost just to let them know what time of year it is. The rain has been soaking the ground for them.

More recently, I noticed that some of the spring bulbs, particularly narcissus, are blooming elsewhere. Daffodils with bigger flowers are just about to bloom. Even though I know that the summer bulbs bloom a season later, I also know that, their foliage starts to develop quite some time before bloom. They are not as fast as spring bulbs, so their foliage may appear months before ultimate bloom in summer. Again, I was trying to not get too excited.

Then on Friday, I needed to remove some licorice plant from the opposite end of the same big bed that the Gladiolus papilio is in. I did not go out of my way, but hey, while there, I went over to just make sure there were no problems where the the bulbs are at. I really did not expect to find these two shoots. They are emerging from bulbs at opposite ends of the row of the five groups of bulbs described in the earlier article. They look like small shoots of common gladiola, like those that emerge from the tiny cormlets that develop next to larger corms, which is exactly what I was expecting them to look like.