Tulips and a lack of green fingers

Tulips are one of my favourite flowers. Perhaps because they seem so unaffected and fresh, simple but yet delicate. They come in so many magnificent shapes, colours and varieties and especially this time of the year I can't seem to get enough of them.

Tulips are considered to be a true spring flower in Sweden, especially around the time of Easter. Soon they'll blossom in my garden too, oh joy! And this year, this autumn I'll remember to put down a few new ones in the dirt myself. So far I've actually just thoroughly enjoyed what the previous owner with green fingers have left for us.

My fingers aren't very green I'm afraid. I have good intentions - and I do come from good green-fingered blood lines of gardeners and garden architects - but I don't seem to have developed that certain greenish fingerspitzgefühl and patience with all things great and beautiful in the garden.

But I do like to have them, and buy them, the flowers, the tulips. When it comes to tulips I like to keep things simple in all that abundance of colour and shape. So I prefer to buy them in orange, pink or purple. And when I'm really daring I mix them... But in the end I'm happy any way I can get them really. I'm not that picky. With tulips.

I also like to keep a vase with fresh tulips on my desk at work, when I can. They bring both splashes of colour, a touch of nature and a reason to take those necessary breaks and contemplate life and its course. Highly recommended!

Even tulips that start to wither are beautiful. And when the time comes to let them move on to greener pastures their petals are strangely wonderful when they lay there in the sink sighing that very last goodbye.

There are also two novels where the story revolves around tulips, that I really recommend. One of them being one of my all-time favourite books; - Powerbook by Jeanette Winterson

the other more of a nice past-time with an interesting story which tells of the tulip-madness in the 17th century Netherlands; Tulip fever by Deborah Moggach.

My four-legged family-members also enjoy a bit of a tulip now and then. As far as I know they don't share my predilection for non-edible literature though. No matter how many stories of tulips that might hide between the covers.