Tulips

"The Surprise Tulip"

There is nothing more lovely than a mass of tulips in full bloom.

In today's blog post, read about a tulip that returns after years of sleep.

photo, morguefile.com

Each day of warm weather brings a new flower to Spring's stage.

This week brought one unexpected candy-stripe tulip.

More than a few years ago, 

I planted three flower pots with spring bulbs:

daffodils at 6 inches, tulips at 5, grape hyacinths at 2-3,

all topped off with johnny-jump-ups and violas.

here are the pots, before the tulips bloomed

And they were beautiful in their sunny location on top of a brick area.

But then summer came and every summer annual planted in those 3 pots

dried up in the heat and looked scraggly and unattractive.

No amount of watering helped save them.

So I moved the three pots to the back yard, which is very shady.

And the next spring, only the daffodils came up and bloomed.

Same for the next spring, and the next.

I had even forgotten I had planted tulips in those pots until this week. 

The daffodils were spent, so they had closed their yellow trumpets, 

rolling them up into a dark gold package 

before disappearing completely until next spring.

photo, morguefile.com

And then yesterday, I saw it: one pink and white-edged tulip

standing out from the daffodil leaves.

Where had he been all this time?

Perhaps this quote from Nathaniel Hawthorne 

explains in part the tulip's sudden reappearance:

Love, whether newly born, or aroused from a death-like slumber,

must always create sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance,

this it overflows upon the outward world.

The answer lies in there somewhere,

shrouded by the mysteries of plants and flowers 

and the subtle energies of nature.

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