Tulips

[Connery]

One of my favorite flowers, the Tulip


Tulips
By A. E. Stallings

The tulips make me want to paint,
Something about the way they drop
Their petals on the tabletop
And do not wilt so much as faint,

Something about their burnt-out hearts,
Something about their pallid stems
Wearing decay like diadems,
Parading finishes like starts,

Something about the way they twist
As if to catch the last applause,
And drink the moment through long straws,
And how, tomorrow, they’ll be missed.

The way they’re somehow getting clearer,
The tulips make me want to see—
The tulips make the other me
(The backwards one who’s in the mirror,

The one who can’t tell left from right),
Glance now over the wrong shoulder
To watch them get a little older
And give themselves up to the light.

I took these photos over the weekend.

 

[Gracie]

Beautiful.

 

[Mr. H.]

Our back yard...

 

[Mr. H.]

LOL damned iPhone.

 

[Flopper]

One of my favorite flowers, the Tulip


Tulips
By A. E. Stallings

The tulips make me want to paint,
Something about the way they drop
Their petals on the tabletop
And do not wilt so much as faint,

Something about their burnt-out hearts,
Something about their pallid stems
Wearing decay like diadems,
Parading finishes like starts,

Something about the way they twist
As if to catch the last applause,
And drink the moment through long straws,
And how, tomorrow, they’ll be missed.

The way they’re somehow getting clearer,
The tulips make me want to see—
The tulips make the other me
(The backwards one who’s in the mirror,

The one who can’t tell left from right),
Glance now over the wrong shoulder
To watch them get a little older
And give themselves up to the light.

I took these photos over the weekend.

Great Pictures. If you are in Washington state in April, don't miss the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival.

 

[Mr. H.]

Oooh we'll be passing by Holland, Michigan this weekend.

Tulip Time Festival!

 

[Mr. H.]

Tulips are better than one.

 

[Bill Angel]

It's been a good spring for tulips in Baltimore.

 

[editec]

Tulip bulbs were the objects of obsession in one of the most famous (and truly weird) BUBBLES in economic history/

Tulipmania (Tulipomania)

The nursery catalog of the Haarlem florist P. Cos (1637) is invaluable among tulip books in that it is the only one to include the name, weight, and selling price of the illustrated flowers, the most expensive of which was the Viseroij (Viceroy), a Violetten commemorated in the gouache above. A later hand has indicated a selling price of 3,000 guilders for the bulb when it weighed 410 aasen and 4,200 guilders when it weighed 658 aasen. This is the price and weight listed for the sale of a Viseroij at the Alkmaar auction that year and presumably is the same flower.

Even the lower price was twenty times the annual salary of a skilled craftsman. A contemporary pamphleteer provides a vivid sense of what 3,000 guilders would have purchased at the time: eight pigs, four oxen, twelve sheep, twenty-four tons of wheat, forty-eight tons of rye, two hogsheads of wine, four barrels of beer, two tons of butter, a thousand pounds of cheese, a silver drinking cup (as well as clothes, bed and mattress, and a ship!)—all this for a bulb that weighed a bit more than half an ounce.

Even higher prices were offered for Semper Augustus, a variegated break that was the most celebrated of all tulips.