When it comes to gardening, there is one constant in my life\u2014I never buy enough tulips.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think animals eat or move most of them, nor do my bulbs have an uncommonly low success rate.\u00a0 It is just that the bag of bulbs that seems so large in the fall when I am digging holes produces a spring harvest that seems disproportionally small.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I can live with that, though there is a strong temptation every year to order more than I can possibly plant by the end of November or so.\u00a0 My choices vary from year to year.\u00a0 I went through a lily-form tulip phase when I ordered nothing but the beautiful slender-cupped specimens that look vaguely like the tulips grown back in the Ottoman Empire\u2019s heyday. \u00a0One year I was enamored of fringed tulips after finding a serendipitous fringed specimen sprouting from my neighbor\u2019s compost heap. \u00a0Last year I bought little species tulips in the hopes that more of them would return after the first year.<\/p>\n
This year, however, I am leaning towards large and lush.\u00a0 I have ordered two peony-flowering varieties, the apricot\/peach\/tangerine \u2018Charming Beauty\u2019; and the provocatively named \u2018Sensual Touch\u2019, which is described as \u201csmoldering orange, golden-apricot and rich tangerine with pink flushes and paler, almost yellow, crystalline fringed edges.\u201d\u00a0 Both sound so lush that they are likely to make casual observers swoon. \u00a0Since I haven\u2019t fully recovered from the fringed phase, I have also ordered \u2018Fringed Family\u2019, a purple-flowered, fringed tulip with two or more blooms per stem.<\/p>\n
A character on a legal show that I used to watch always said, \u201cGo big or don\u2019t go at all.\u201d \u00a0That is my philosophy this year and next spring I hope to be awash in voluptuous tulips.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When it comes to gardening, there is one constant in my life\u2014I never buy enough tulips.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think animals eat or move most of them, nor do my bulbs have an uncommonly low success rate.\u00a0 It is just that the bag of bulbs that seems so large in the fall when I am digging … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,2],"tags":[295,381,384,382,383,275],"class_list":["post-594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall","category-general-interest","category-spring","tag-bulbs","tag-buying-tulips","tag-double-tulips","tag-fringed-tulips","tag-peony-form-tulips","tag-tulips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=594"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":595,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594\/revisions\/595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}