Lockdown day 51
Wednesday May 06th 2020, 10:28 pm
Filed under: Family,Garden,History,Life

They are ubiquitous where I grew up, but here, you have to be willing to buy new bulbs every fall or dig the old ones up and store them in your fridge all winter and not mistakenly use them for dinner. They’re poisonous, so you really don’t want to make that mistake.

But not to the local squirrels, who go straight for them as soon as they’re in the ground. I tried to plant some years ago and found it a lost cause.

But today brought a surprise.

One of my kids sent me a picture of two beautiful flowers in loud, random-brushstroke stripes, a petal on each curling and twisting while the others grew straighter, with the question, did I know what these were?

Tulips!

I said that historically, tulipmania in Holland four hundred years ago was set off by the search for specimens like these. They were gorgeous.

I went back to my afghan–I finished a fish, yay! I just need to tighten up the strands running behind so they don’t show–and thought about all the new random variants in a short time that made ordinary flowers into something never seen before, more beautiful, each as individual as the next, costly and highly sought after.

Caused by a virus.

 


4 Comments so far
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There is still joy to be experienced: thank you for sharing some of yours.

Comment by Suzanne in Montreal 05.07.20 @ 6:33 am

Our first fall in Minnesota (1999) I planted over 400 bulbs of various kinds in our front garden areas. I was quite disappointed in the spring to discover that deer and squirrels love most all bulbs except daffodils and hyacinths. If I had known, I would have planted a lot more than ~50 daffodils. The deer and rabbits love the hyacinth plants the day before the blooms open. Some days I really miss just having to deal with the quail and scrub jays in my gardens.

Comment by Barbara 05.07.20 @ 8:26 am

Nice fish!

I love tulips; going to the u-pick tulip farm up north was great fun.

Comment by ccr in MA 05.07.20 @ 1:52 pm

Nice fish! And timely – we had fish tacos for dinner. 🙂

Comment by twinsetellen 05.07.20 @ 10:56 pm



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