Category — Flower admiration

It’s the time of year when plants are dead, dormant, or dying: dropping leaves, shriveling up, slumping to the ground. At least they are if you’re north of the equator.

But all year, if you look for it, there are signs of death in life, as well as the other way around. I look for them, for I find a strange, guilty pleasure in the beauties of death and dying.

I take photos of what I see, and since I take hundreds of photos (oh, the greatness of digital cameras: I don’t have to feel guilty about wasting film, or the poison chemicals it will take to process it)—since I take hundreds of photos, some of them turn out almost like what I was looking at, or, if I’m really lucky, like what I was feeling as I looked. I keep them. (To be honest, I also keep a lot of others; it’s a great way to learn how not to make a picture.)

In this post, I’m showing a few of the photos I’ve made on the beauties of death. As the number after the title hints, this isn’t going to be the last of this.

I know I’m not the only one who values the beauty in death: besides the fact that I’m not megalomaniac enough to think I’m that unique, I’ve seen some incredible photos on the subject, on the web and off.  I’d be interested to hear of others’ transcendent moments with death, and maybe even do a guest post of photos, if there’s an interest. To me, the amazing thing is that, no matter how many people take (or paint) a picture of the same thing, any honest pictures will be fresh. No one sees things quite the same way.

Worth admiring: Lady Jane tulips furled up for the night, with World Expression and Sorbet in the background. The white narcissus is Thalia, an heirloom variety.

When their best tulips bloomed, sultans of the Ottoman Empire used to throw tulip parties. They called out the musicians, got a crew to put mirrored lights and filigreed silver tulip labels in the garden, and to pick even more tulips to put in bottles and vases between the ones growing in the ground. Food and drink flowed freely. Everybody who was anybody came.

The sultans had one big advantage: the moment their tulips were looking their best, they called and people came running. That doesn’t work so well when you are an ordinary person whose friends also have schedules. Tulips won’t bloom on a human schedule and, sadly, human life has distanced itself from accomodating the rhythms of a tulip.

In spite of these obstacles, I have had tulip admiration sessions, ranging from one friend coming over and chanting in Hindi as the sun set on the tulips (and I took photographs of them), to having a couple of friends to tea in the garden. This year I had the most elaborate tulip celebration yet. For some reason, several people were available on a couple of days’ notice. So I had them over to drink pink daquiris, eat finger food, and talk.

The pink daquiris were, of course, to match the red-and-white tulips currently in bloom. I got my recipe from The Joy of Cooking (that cookbook really does have almost everything). I partly chose it for the color (it matched the tulips), and partly because, studying the pages further, I realized the ingredients were almost the same as grog. So if the weather got suddenly cold and we had to move indoors, I could serve hot drinks instead.

When we ran out of space amid the tulips on the porch (it’s pretty much filled to capacity with plants), we moved to the side yard and looked at flowers as the setting sun lit them up.

We did eventually go indoors, but spent until dark sitting out, facing tulips, eating, drinking, and talking. The topic often reverted to plants, since I’d invited a bunch of gardeners. Some of them brought me plants, an unexpected and pleasing bonus. After we went inside I forced people to read catalogues, but they stayed anyway.

That sweet spring green time is so brief. It’s good to take time out to appreciate it, even if it’s only you, sitting out for ten minutes with your morning cup of coffee. Opening your eyes.

References

The Tulip, Anna Pavord, Bloomsbury Publishing, 1999, pgs. 45-6

The Joy of Cooking, Irma S. Rombauer and Marion Rombauer Baker, Bobbs-Merrill, 1964
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If you’ve noticed that your cut tulips look like they’re in a different position, or even taller, than they were the day before, you’re not having visions. It’s true: tulips writhe and wriggle and, I swear, even grow in the vase.If this bothers you, you can rearrange them periodically (you may need to cut off some stems). Or, you can make the original arrangement loose enough to accommodate tulip wanderings. Or you can just learn to enjoy the new shapes the tulips make in your (or their) bouquet. It’s one of nature’s little ways of reminding us that we’re not in control. You could even choose tulips to celebrate wrigglability: “Fantasy”, an heirloom parrot tulip, twists itself into arabesques in the garden and is especially active in the vase. “Queen of the Night” also has a pretty high wriggle factor.

Tulips in the vase open wide during the day and close up at night, just as they do in the garden. (Some of you may be thinking, “Duh.” But I’ve had several people remark on my wide-open daytime tulips. So I know not everybody knows this.) It’s kind of like getting two or three bouquets for the price of one, if you allow a little space in the arrangement for this. Always allow space for maximum beauty.

Tulips, like most bulbs, like cold water in their vases (most other flowers like their water a little warmed up). The best way to keep your tulips (and other flowers) going is to put them in a cool place in your house. Unfortunately, the coolest places are usually the ones with no light; this may be one of the few instances where you can consider yourself lucky if you have a leaky window letting in cold air and letting out precious costly heat.

Another thing to consider about tulips (and the narcissi, hyacinths, or other flowers you put in with them) is whether they are fragrant. (Yes, some varieties of tulips are fragrant-I’ll get into that in another post.) This determines where you place them, because sweet, heady smells, while lovely in a bedroom, entryway, or living room, are a little weird on the table. Sweet perfume and food just don’t go together.

Speaking of tulips with other flowers: right now I have a vase of Lady Jane and Silverado tulips with white Thalia narcissus. Usually, though, I tend to stick to a single variety of tulip in a vase-this allows me to get a closeup look at all the beautiful variations in one type of tulip, and to see their lives from beginning to end.

Because I like to keep my tulips in the vase to the very end, when they shatter. I enjoy seeing them twist, sprawl, and turn into crepe paper; there’s a sort of beauty in their death throes. And as I get older, too, it’s good to remember there’s beauty to every stage in life: it just changes form.