Our First Tulip Has Died

Right on schedule, April came to a close and our first tulip has died.

My son was initially disappointed at the death, but I was delighted, as it meant two things – first, that we really did plant a successful tulip garden, and the darned things grew and grew and got taller and taller and more beautiful, opened daily and delicately closed again each night. The near-frost conditions that dogged the entire month of April were no match for our sprouts.


Second, the first tulip has, as I said, bent its head after a full life course, but there are still bulbs to bloom. My original idea to have tulips that would open early and late turned into actuality. I haven’t yet seen a single white flower, and I could swear I planted them. But we’ve had regal flowers throughout the month, and now, tulips in May, is just gravy. We may have new blooms over the next week or so, and we just might have a few of Custer’s last stand flowers in bloom all the way until Memorial Day.

Our daily flower checks have continued, and all three people in our house have way too much pride in this project. If pride cometh before the fall, we’re all gonna crash. My son can’t get over the fact that he can see flowers right out his bedroom window. I took him to see tulip farms, with acres and acres of perfectly groomed tulips, all in rows, and he still thinks our tulip garden is something special.


He’s begun to wonder what we could plant for my next birthday – more tulips? If so, where? Perhaps around the base of the trees on our front lawn. Maybe it’s only my pride that is dangerously high. I am proud of the garden, proud of our family efforts, proud – inordinately proud – that I’m raising the kind of child who has been touched by this project and who brings his open spirit and willingness to enjoy our life to the silly, adventuresome, kind-of boring things we choose to do. He can appreciate masses of tulips, rushing from one bed to the next to describe a color combination, or shape of tulip leaf, or excitedly taking a picture of a perfect open tulip revealing its inner sanctum of unexpected darkness and beauty – and still appreciate our little garden. It took me decades to find worth at all its levels – the grand and the simple. And he’s found it before his first decade has ended.


So go on, tulips, continue through your life cycle, eventually leaving us with nothing but drooping flowers. 70-something drooping and dying flowers will grace our front windows. And I know a few people who will find something amazing in all this. And one who will probably write about it.