It feels like fall. It looks like fall. The good news for us garden optimists is that in five months it will feel like this again and it will be spring. One way to increase your spring enjoyment is to add some spring flowering bulbs to your garden.

The ideal time to plant them is in the fall as night temperatures drop below 50 degrees and before the ground gets hard from freezing. That's now, and I'll let you guess how long that will last.

Traditional wisdom suggests that they receive a planting depth of two to three times the size of the bulb. Ignore the mulch or mulch lightly ahead of winter as the temperature falls. Heavy mulch may increase disease problems, however disease is never much of a problem with spring bulbs.

Bulbs are not picky about soil. You and your bulbs will not be unhappy unless you pick a boggy spot. Stay away from wet feet and it's hard not to have success.

The biggest problem with bulbs is what to do with the foliage between spring bloom and when it naturally disappears in the early summer. Ideally, you do nothing. A translation and suggestions about the last four words follows.

I recently grabbed 50 daffodil bulbs which are destined to find a home in an evolving garden that over the last dozen years has transformed itself repeatedly, after starting as a planting of odds and ends.

First, the Shasta daisies seemed to dominate. Then the black-eyed susans took control, and finally, the coneflowers are top dog. There are lots of other perennials that are holding their own, but it looked a bit underwhelming last year in the earliest days of spring.

In go the bulbs, and their dying foliage will be covered by other plants. In the shade, you can use hostas, ferns, astilbes or a host of other plants to do the same job. Bulbs will do well in deciduous (drop their leaves) shade since these sites are sunny while the bulbs are active and shady only while they are resting.

If you wish to scatter crocus or other small bulbs throughout your yard, you should set the mower higher until their foliage completely dies.

Most bulbs will naturalize. The exception is the large flowered tulips that will go down hill rather quickly. It wouldn't be a bad idea to separate thickening plantings every half dozen or so years. I'll tell you that, but I doubt that that will ever be a priority in my garden. If you live in a squirrel-dominated community, and they steal your tulip bulbs, you can thwart them by laying a small piece of one-inch mesh chicken wire over the bulbs when you plant. It seems they only like tulips.

Fertilize sparingly. Do it after bloom. Use a bulb fertilizer or one that has a near even ratio. The only good reason to fertilize is if you are trying to coax a second or third year out of the large flowered tulips.

Think spring. Act now.