Some people open their windows and let a breeze in and get out the mop and dust sauce and clean. I get out my shovel. I’ve been holding my breath through the longest hardest coldest winter in recent memory for spring to break so long that it’s not a season anymore it’s a cure.
I planted 700 tulips last fall, plus 50-or-so (more) fritillaria, 50 (more) trumpet lilies, plus some assorted other stuff — narcissuses (they outlawed the plural “i”?), muscari, & cetera, and I have invested pretty much every last kernel of extra hope I have left lodged wherever it is in my chest into the vainglory of 700+ sublimely glaring, quietly screaming, asexually-whoring whorls and saucers of come-hither color that if a sub-zero front came raging through town tomorrow killing every firstborn flower I would most likely hang myself from a greenhouse rafter. At the least I would hit the high stream in a basket of reeds.
That plus I planted some thousand seeds of various kinds and warmed them through early and then late March on to early April in a cold frame or hot house or whatever you call it. 300+ heirloom tomatoes of various freaky families, Corn and kale and collard greens and chard. Nasturtium and broccoli and lettuce and arugula for the missus who can think of nothing but, giant pumpkins, pie pumpkins, acorn squash, lemon cucumbers, striped and regular beets, and on and on and on, all happily sprouting in the nice wet jungular I heat made under the plastic with the space heater running 24/7 carbon footprint be damned.
Suffice it to say I’ve got some energy invested in these May flowers. Enough that when I caught the brown dog traipsing, for some godforsaken reason, on top of the tender seedlings in the plastic trays on the back patio this morning, I smacked the glass to scare her, gave her the stink-eye and told her, “you. you are such a dumb-ass.”
Now, today, this April 26th in the year of our lord 2009, there is so much about to pop that if I sneeze there will be pollen flying enough to.. Well, we wouldn’t want to overdo the metaphors now would we?
This one especially, the blumex tulip, strong candidate for the weirdest flower this side of the Black Sea medal, verging so close today to a slack-jawed snaggletoothed overbit inbred double-cousin but somehow, in a few days time, managing to morph into the sexiest multi-colored misshapen siren ever to grace this earth, has changed my understanding of beauty.
There’s more here.
The ever-present blog complication: how do I satisfactorily convey the absolute obscenity of what is about to happen without offending the curious in-laws and meddling teenage offspring that happen across these words?
I stop short. And leave the rest to the imagination.
