Tulips are different from daffodils. Unless the daffodils are smitten with hungry grubs or speared by the gardener, they'll sit and clump up and flower until they're overcrowded. Tulips grow to flowering size, do their thing, then produce daughter bulbs which then have to grow to flowering size. If you have a clump of species tulips you can see this going on season by season. If they aren't deep enough they produce 'dropper' roots and pull themselves further into the ground. It's a fascinating structure to see. If you want a guaranteed display of a particular tulip then your best bet is to buy fresh each year to be sure of uniform flowering and creating the picture you had in mind. If you have one of 'those' gardens (like mine!), where the leaves are as welcome as the flowers, then you can dig up and replant each year. Or you can leave them in place. Generally, in this zone and place, I do not fridge my bulbs. Not any of them. They resent it to death. In zones with baking summers I can see it could be necessary to persuade the bulbs that it's time to put out the starter roots before winter sets in. A little shiver down the spine, so to speak. For me, one tulip I can count on to return without being lifted is 'Spring Green'. And T violacaea. Most of the others are taken out, left so the leaves fall, then put into net bags and hung in a cool shaded place. They stay there until I replant in May and June (your November-December). However, there are always daughter bulbs that go unremarked until they show up the following spring. If you don't like that, and digging is not an option, then you can use a Roundup wiper wand on the leaf to remove the problem.

I bought four big Needlepoint holly bushes (summer close-out sale at Lowe's - 75% off!). They are loaded with red berries. Going to move my roses (again) and other flowering plants over into the former potager garden with the irises (some new and some I dug up, thinned out and transplanted in there. The lavender cuttings are growing really fast and are already 2+ feet tall and very bushy. They are planted along the terrace edge. The roses will go in there. I planted the rosemary plants I rooted in there. The climbing Don Juan will got next to the entrance arbor, opposite the yellow climber on the other side. In the area where the roses are now, I am planting some St. Augustine grass in there. I got it from my dad's yard. He dug starts of it out of my yard in Louisiana 20+ years ago and now it will come home, so to speak. I want to plant one of the hollies on the south end and move the Dogwood down to that area to provide shade in summer. I need shade at the back of the house so I can sit out on the patio, since I never got my covered veranda (pergola). I want to add more evergreens for winter interest and create a cool, lush area around the patio, but nothing right against the patio on account of snakes. I hope to extend the patio area out into the new lawn. I planted one very blue Colorado Blue Spruce last year on the upper side of terrace behind the patio. It was small and since they tend to be rather slow growers, it will be awhile before it becomes the lovely specimen tree I dream of it one day becoming. I have a friend who works at a place where they sell recycled Rail Road ties. "Just bring your little red truck and we'll filler up"! Those will be the new "bones" of my patio terracing. I want to build it up about 3 feet above the patio area. I think it will look pretty nifty - perfect in my "rustic" country cottage style yard. I have a little round preform pool to set in the ground somewhere...just a little reflection pool in a cool area of the garden with my little garden girl statue set beside it, as if she is looking into the pool. I have a great place in mind. Well, that sounds like a lot of "bones" to dig up and relocate, but I already have a bit of a start on it and if I do it like that, a little at a time, by mid-summer next year, God willing, it should look like it has been that way for years and it shouldn't be too hard on MY bones. (hehehe) ~Annie

Rachner, in that situation, you need to learn to like hostas. Hostas grow well in Chicago, and are available in a wide variety of sizes, shapes, and colors from white to yellow-gold to shades of green and a few that are "blue" from April to (or even through) June. The (usually) modest flowers range from whitish to lavender to purple. I don't know beans about lilies, but I know about gardening in Chicago in the shade. *sigh*

I have dug up dahlia bulbs late. I kept waiting for them to go dormant and they just never did! One day, it got really, really cold and the ground froze in a short period of time (surface). It was difficult to dig them up and they all "worked" the next year. People are tempting me to attempt to get my dahlia tubers through the winter outside. I am going to heavily mulch them. They are also planted next to the foundation of the house. I have one dahlia that comes back every year without being dug up. It is a high risk project though. I would think that your dahlias are fine.