Tulip Crazy

Thank you again for the messages of sympathy about my crashed image files. We are coming up for air and accessing many photographs that I feared might have been lost.

This week it’s tulip crazy. Some of you will know that the tulip is my favourite flower in the garden. Let’s just forget about the fact that for years I though they were called lupins!! On discovery of that error my mother signed me up for a school trip to the Dutch bulb fields.

That trip to Holland was a great success. We went to all the special places in that country like Markem and Volendam; we toured the canals in Amsterdam and did the compulsory visit to a diamond works. Sadly though spring was late that year and the tulips had not emerged. I think I learnt more about the red-light district of Amsterdam than I did about red tulips.

However my love of the flowers continues and they are one of the bulbs we grow in the garden to this day. My wife has educated me in how to plant them – she perseveres with the names of them – and in fact one or two of the names stick.

I like Parrot- Tulips and she doesn’t. She likes Lily-Flowered and I like tulips to have the more traditional pear shape – and I liked them to stay like that. She enjoys watching them open out so that the bees can access the pollen.  

I have selected some traditional pictures of tulips and some – let’s just say I’ve worked on.

I’m calling it “Tulip Crazy”.

Please don’t get too enthusiastic about them, it’ll only encourage me to construct more of them.

Fortunately for the critics – they can take heart the season is short lived.

Have a good weekend