Sunday, May 22, 2011

A Feast for the Eyes

It happens every year....  Spring gifts us with tulips in every color of the rainbow, and then the rains come.  Exuberant winds blow through the garden, and in only a day or so, the tulips are colonies of waving stems unadorned by petals and stamens.

I adore tulips in the fullness of their blooming, and the camera loves them too, but they are loveliest as they are coming apart and drifting in the wind like little silken boats.  Coming to rest on the earth, the blooms form masses of confetti petals, scarlet and gold, pink and creamy white, sometimes a purple as dark as night.

Mozart devotee and lifelong tulip lover that I am, I planted the dark purple tulips called "Queen of the Night" again last autumn, but nary a one came up.  Perhaps the midnight Queens taste like wine - their sleeping bulbs are always the first to be snatched by squirrels.

5 comments:

Tabor said...

These almost seem too seductive to be real.

kerrdelune said...

Tabor, thank you - how the camera does love tulips!

Guy said...

Hi Cate

My tulips are still coming up. I have some of the yellow ones with red that you posted, so yours are lovely reminders of what I have to look forward to.

Thanks
Guy

the wild magnolia said...

To plant and adorn a garden with tulips is a gift!

Here in south Florida we are unable to enjoy this beauty from the ground up. We are able to purchase gorgeous cut tulips.

It's just not the same.

Thank you.

One Woman's Journey - a journal being written from Woodhaven - her cottage in the woods. said...

you just reminded me - the tulips I brought from the city - a gift from the Netherlands - never came up. Wonder who ate the dark purple beauties.
Thank you for sharing.....