More winter chores, onions

As promised, it was a busy weekend in the garden. I planted onions - I didn't want to grow only onions this spring, so I limited my planting in the garden to two square feet. From my vegetable garden planting, I should get about 10 green and 10 mature onions. That left me about 50 starts of each variety to do something with ($1.99 will by you a load of onions). Since my garlic is holding it's own in the cottage garden (the deer nibbled on one and left the rest alone - a sure sign of deer disgust), I planted the rest of the onions in little groups of 3, 5 or 7 in my cottage garden. I hope they make it.
I planted my 4 inch perennials in my new bed, ensuring it will be voted the perennial border most likely to make Monet wish he had never held a paint brush.
In my much paths in the cottage garden I found the basal rosettes of three mexican hats and two native verbenas growing. I dug them all up and transplanted them, the verbenas to the garden beds and the mexican hats to the berm created by my stream bed. It has been my experience that verbena transplants better than mexican hat (a tap root involved, maybe?). Another good native to transplant is the mealy cup sage, a plant that is very high on my list of native plants that are great garden citizens.
While on the subject of moving plants, I posted lately that I read that you can root stems from Artemesia. I tried it with several stems of varying lengths and woodiness. They immediately wilted as though I had thrown them out in the August sun. They have not completely given up two days later, but I don't hold out much hope.
I trimmed back more perennials on Saturday. My bi-color iris plants were completely browned by the 8 degree freeze three weekends ago. I trimmed them to the ground and can only hope they will come back. They have never died all the way to the ground before. I also trimmed some lantana that I had been ignoring for two months. I came up with a simple yet ingenious plan to use my stemy perennial trimmings to mulch the paths in my vegetable garden, which was becoming a delightful mix of weeds and mud I call abandoned lot contemporary. The trimmings as mulch is not very much easier on the eyes, but it serves its purpose and I admire my utility.
Next up - installing drip irrigation in all my beds. I already have it in my largest cottage bed. Getting it in place requires crawling around in the beds, so I need a weekend that is dry enough that I will not overly compact my soil. I need to finish before all the perennials come back as it is much easy to lay the tubing without plants in the way. Also on that dry weekend is the much discussed, yet never implemented soil testing.