Two autumns ago I purchased two boxes of bulbs to plant in pots on my balcony. They were standard supermarket quality. When I opened the box, the little bulbs were dried out and unusable. I returned the dried up specimens to the New Jersey office of the Dutch grower. I never received acknowledgement that I had written. I chalked their customer service up to the same quality standards as the bulbs. Then this past autumn, one day at the Post Office, I am handed two rather large boxes. I take them home and open them, and inside is a wonderful assortment of bulbs, high quality, big bulbs. The New Jersey office is so sorry my bulbs were inadequate and hopes these ‘replacements’ will make up for it. I wonder why they sent me two boxes, and then I understand. My name and address is on the shipping label of both boxes, but the enclosed letters, one is addressed to me, and one to Pete Smith, who lives somewhere else, not at my address. I plant all the bulbs, Pete’s and mine. I write the company to thank them. I thank them for my bulbs and for Pete’s, but I enclose in my reply their letter to Pete, suggesting that he would more than likely be as delighted as I am with the ‘replacements’. I also assure them that I have planted Pete’s share. The bulbs sit on my ‘balcony/fire escape’ all Autumn and Winter 2012-2013. February, the shoots start to appear through the potting soil. March, a bit more growth… but come April, nothing. All the growth I saw is gone and new growth appears to be stunted. This I didn’t understand. Yesterday I brought them in, dumped the bulbs out of the pots, into the sink to see what had happened. There was good root growth, but the bulbs appeared to have been sheared off. I replanted them, exposed a bit more to the sun and one that had semi-survived I planted near the top of the rim of the pot. I set the three pots back outside. I was working on a script, which I do best by wandering and reciting and as I approached the window, unexpectedly, something moved, fluttered away with haste, a gentle, dainty, graceful pigeon. How did they find my pots? I have watched for the past 24 hours and two or three have been hanging around on the fire escape stairs, checking out the new pottings. They have been feasting on my tender new shoots. I will once again have to buy potted, blooming bulbs, foregoing the satisfaction of a do-it-yourself-experience.