Even though the weather has been totally schizophrenic, the species tulips are out in full force.
I planted some in my newest Day Lily garden, which started out life as the Rose Garden portion of my stroll garden. Over the years all the roses planted there succumbed to the rose rosette disease that is indigenous to our area. Thanks to the plantings of multiflora roses done in the 30s and 40s, we not only have a vector for the mite that carries the virus but a state-wide infestation of an invasive exotic.
At any rate, a couple of years ago when the last rose kicked the bucket, I repurposed the area as a day lily garden. I needed a new space for them since the original day lily garden is not very happy any more due to the fact that the shrubbery of the stroll garden has gotten so tall it shades the day lilies to the north of it, and the ground ivy and vinca are busy trying to strangle them at the same time.
There are days when I wonder why in the world I think I have enough energy to maintain all the gardens I do have. Especially when I am suffering the results of the face plant I did a few days ago. My artificial hip does not think that was a good activity to engage in. But at least I did not plant my face in the rock borders of the path I fell into.
But I digress.
It turns out that if you plant species tulips you have planted something that is a survivor and a colonizer. If you think about the fact that most of these little beauties are natives of the mountains of Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan, it makes perfect sense. Even so, it was news to me that a couple of tiny bulbs could manifest as empire builders. They are indeed.
Check out the orange tulips, and ntoice how they have spread through the garden. The yellow ones in the right corner have completely filled in the area around the perovskia (Russian sage). Fortunately, they appear to be willing to peacefully coexist with it, unlike some other colonizers I could name. (e.g. Missouri primrose, spotted knapweed).
Here is a close up of the corner where the tulips are happiest.
Yes, yes. I see the chickweed in the lower corner.
Two days ago it was 80 degrees here, yesterday the temperature dropped precipitously all day and this morning it is just below freezing. I have a cover over my peonies, which are now about a foot tall, and am hoping and praying that they will survive tonight. The wisteria is way too large to cover, it has big swollen buds and I hope it also makes it through the freeze promised for tonight.
The tulips won’t care at all.
the havens 
I have tried and tried at all my place to get *something * to colonize. Squirrels eat the tulips, last house there wasn’t enough sun for daffodils, deer ate anything green whether or not it had prickles. In my new place I have a fenced backyard. I am going with hostas in the ground instead of containers (deer above, voles below sucking leaves like spaghetti). The deer could easily jump the fence by why do that when there is all this other tasty stuff. Who would have thought this close in -but the neighborhood has dozens of empty full wooded lots – why we bought – and the deer have no predators. Not even hunters (suburbs). I love reading of your garden. I am jealous. BTW our weather is doing much the same thing. I have a big old peony plant I inherited here – I’m hoping it does fine.
You are not alone!
My Aunt Esther lived in the Pittsburg area and had the same story about the deer that you have. It seems that the Eastern Seaboard is still great habitat! She called them furred rats.
Around here we don’t have as much trouble with voles as we do with gophers and squirrels, who find all sorts of things to be very tasty. I am not sure why gophers don’t get a horrible headache trying to dig through the rocks in our soil.
I have an acquaintance here who, at great labor and expense, constructed a fence all around her half acre plot. It was ten feet tall. She and her husband drove 7 foot metal posts into the ground and then attached a second story of 6 foot posts to those. After that, they put stock wire around the first level and black plastic deer fence above that. It did keet the deer OUT. It looked like heck, though, and after the first winter they had to reinstall all the plastic fencing because the wind and snow tore it down.
Our friends in Climax Springs did a similar construction except that they also added a piece of chicken wire to the bottom of the stock wire that was long enough to make an L down to and along the ground. In the resulting corner they installed an electric fence wire with a friend about 16 inches above that. Their fence not only keeps out deer, it also keeps out rabbits, squirrels, ground hogs and raccoons.
I had a friend in Fairbanks who had the misfortune to build her house right along a traditional moose right of way. It took her and her husband three years, but they did eventually construct a fence that kept the moose out of her garden. It was not so much a fence as a stockade…
i would love to have colonizing tulips, but have a similar deer and squirrel problem with the bulbs. i’ve started putting some bulbs in under a chicken wire barrier layer. seemed to work this year in my front garden area. may tackle the back in the fall!
I have not noticed that the squirrels and deer care much for the species tulips. The interesting thing about them is that they come from the supplier as bulbs but when they make a colony they are sending out rhizomes. I dug up a spot last fall where I was trying to get rid of a too invasive yellow echinacea, and the tulips in the area took that as an invitation to spread wildly. I never saw a single bulb during that evolution either. Now I have a good sized clump of them. You might have better luck with these guys than with the big hybridized beauties we think of as tulips.
But if you have trouble with squirrels, don’t ever bother to plant grecian windflowers. Those corms are apparently like gourmet candy to squirrels.