Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.
THE MOST DAZZLING display of tulips I’ve ever seen was a few years back, a Capitol Hill row house front garden, typically-sized, maybe 15 by 20 feet, completely covered in salmon-colored tulips—the precise shade of salmon as the house. The flowers stood shoulder to shoulder without a space between to breathe. It was as if Salvador Dali had taken a brush and swiped, the color swooping from the roofline down to the sidewalk. It was astonishing. I took no photos.
I have some bulbs, tulips and daffodils in the front yard that go back over 30 years. There was this special, run by American Express just after moving to this house with its patches of front and back yard, and the deal looked just fine to me, exciting even.
There were hundreds of sweet-smelling grape hyacinth, stubby red tulips with yellow centers, tall white ones like goblets, and garden variety yellow daffodils. For years they put on a very fine show.
Amazingly, the white tulips are still coming up, their regal white cups emerging from the ivy ground cover. Less amazing, the daffs are also still come up, multiplying each year no matter how I try to kill them off to make way for something more . . . imaginative.
The post-flower daffodil foliage is an ugly sight and far longer-lasting than the flowers themselves—which wither fast if we get a hot day or two. A better idea in close quarters would have been to spend a couple of bucks on grocery store bunches, stick them in those little pointy-bottomed water holders and jam them here and there, replacing them when they went limp.
This is a pretty good tip for most lack-of-flower situations, by the way. I actually got the idea from Rob DeFeo of the National Park Service. The man who declares when the cherry trees will bloom has been known to jazz up his own garden with store-bought blossoms.
Pause. Nap time.
Snip snip snip. Snip. Snip snip snip. What an irritating sound and I know who’s making it. The sheets are fresh and white, a cool breeze flutters the curtains, the ceiling fan gently tosses said breeze to and fro, and I’m sacked out beneath it, being near death due to sitting next to an extremely nasty old French lady with vociferous sniffles on a plane back from Florida the other day—and snip. Snip snip.
Hauling myself out of bed and tripping over a suitcase on the way to the window, I open the shutters and lean out over the window box and yes. Snip. It’s he. Snip. Who else but My Prince, and why is he snipping the forsythia, without permission.
“My darling,” I say. And I do say it ever so nicely, not wishing to rile him, just wishing him away. “Do you know how irritating that sound is?”
“Oh, sorry,” he says. Surprising. He hates being halted in his Very Important Tasks no matter how gently one wishes . . .
Returning to my nest and smothering my head in down, I reclose my eyes.
Swish, swish swish, swish. Swish swish swish.
Now he’s sweeping. Why does he think this is any better?
How did I get here, I’m wondering. I should be playing tennis in my Scarsdale backyard (even though I don’t play tennis) and afterwards, white towel around my neck, being served iced tea in a frosty glass. Skinny and tan. Or calling the doorman from my prewar Park Avenue duplex to hail me a cab to Saks. Skinny and tan. I could shop, given the credit card. Yes. I could.
I’ve already told him what he’s supposed to be doing and he’s not.
I took the wrong road. Sigh.
Sweep. Sweep sweep.
Also. Sous-vide is a terrible thing to do to a prime rib, unless you like chewing a tasteless wad. If you see it on a restaurant menu, and particularly if the server says it’s their most popular dish. Flee.
That is all neither here nor there. I was musing about tulips, wasn’t I?
While the front yard, such as it is, takes care of itself, the backyard is reliant on the selection of bulbs available at Costco where, thankfully, pink and purple dominate. I have the taste of a 7-year-old when it comes to tulips. If they came sprinkled with glitter, I believe I’ve said more than once, my bodice would positively heave.
How grateful I am to myself for having cultivated friends who are not flower aficionados and find anything coming up in the garden worthy of applause, particularly if you hand them a drink.
Two bags of bulbs now hang in the basement stairwell, waiting for the last of this summer’s warmth, when I’ll roust the tropicals and bare the soil. Probably around November.
This year’s haul includes 25 each of pink Early Glory, and lavender Blue Beauty,
deep fuchsia Margaritas, and Foxtrots, which shade from deep pink to near white. All are early bloomers, emerging (with luck) in March and in full bloom when the Kwanzan cherry peaks in mid-April. There’s no trick to this. I read the packages, they’re marked early season.
And when they’re done, I’ll yank them and toss. There is not the luxury of space here to have several different gardens – the rose garden consists of a single, brilliantly red Don Juan clambering up the back porch waterspout. This not Dumbarton Oaks.
As quickly as possible after the tulips’ demise we make way for the transition to the tropics, switching out the sweetness of Spring for the more seductive perfume of jasmine and lemons and the ruffle of palms to greet the summer heat.
—Stephanie Cavanaugh
LittleBird Stephanie writes about flowers and trees and all the things, good and bad, that go into gardening.
