I got some tulips at a few places during the Fall sales a couple of years ago, but won't be doing that anymore. I'm zone 6a and by the time they arrived, I was planting in mid Dec. with "inches" of snow on the ground. I had to walk up and down on the slippery slope to the backyard many times during that day. I had dug the soil out a month before and stored it in our garage in trug tugs (that have handles).I was very cold and frozen when I got done late afternoon.
