washwords

SDSingleGirl‘s comment on my first photo post below reminded me that I’d actually been intending to say a bit more about tulips and my love for them. (Thought I’d post again in the spirit of transparency/not editing after the fact, and okay, so I could have an excuse to perfect my photoblogging and share more beautiful tulips with all of you.

Like SDSinglegirl, tulips are my favorite flower and always have been. Maybe, it’s genetic – my grandmother loves tulips and I think of her with them always. As a young girl, they were the background of the photos she spent hours primping my sister and I for (she’d had three boys), perfecting the ribbons and curls, just so. As a young woman, staying with grandma after college with my then soon-to-be-fiance, we spent hours in the backyard, she and I, planting tulips and daffodils in crazy bright colors, twisting this way and that, my grandfather beaming down on us from the picture window in their bedroom. They are still coming up, though in between the springs I was married and divorced, we lost my Pop-Pop, and she after many happy years in that home, has moved away.

Or maybe my tulip-love was more environmental, nurtured by my experience, rather than naturally instilled. When I was six years old, “we” (okay, dad, but we all came along!) went on Sabattical to Europe. Based in a walk-up apartment on Beethoven Straat in Amsterdam for six months, before our travels, Keukenhoff is one of the strongest memories I have of that whole wonderful trip (that and the playground in Paris, the blue-green flowered sundress I had, the “hey diddle diddle” diary I got in London, the stickers from each country we collected, and the stuffed animal mice my parents got us to umm distract from the real mice we sometimes saw in our apartment. Did I mention I was six?!)

When we came back to the states, we brought tulip bulbs with us. Each spring at the end of the school year, my sister and I would cut a stalk or two and bring them to our teachers. I loved selecting just which color, the way the wet paper towels and green of the stem felt against my hand on the block walk to school.

So, wherever I go, I’m on the lookout for tulips.

In the days before my marriage, I planted tulips in the courtyard of our garden apartment in Buffalo, New York, knowing full well I would only see the blooms for one season. When I was single again, I fought hard for a plot in a community garden and finally got my spot. While others mulled organic tomatoes and radishes, I thought only of tulips. I did eventually plant tomatoes (and they did great, btw!), but it was the tulips I loved. When I was later cast out from this garden (more on THIS later! weeds schmeeds), I would sneak back to visit my beloved Dutch blossoms.

In the last few years, I’ve taken it upon myself a Mystery Planter has seen fit to plant tulips in the courtyard and side gardens of my downtown DC coop building. I’m glad MP did – those tulips look great and are so nearby! Yet even if someday the Landscape Police swoop in and uproot MP’s work, I feel encouraged that I will always have amazing, beautiful tulips nearby to admire. Just take a look!

Powered by ScribeFire.