Planting bulbs is an act of faith. You dig holes, take some dry, scaly ugly things out of a paper bag, place them right side up in the holes, cover them with dirt, watch rain and snow and ice entomb them. And you wait and wait and wait, believing they will transform themselves into things of beauty. When I was a kid, one of my favorite ``Superman'' episodes - the old black-and-white half-hour show starring George Reeves - showed the Man of Steel holding a piece of coal in his hand and squeezing it, turning the coal, in seconds, into a diamond. That's what the Earth does, Superman explained, only it takes the Earth a million years. This was magic to me…