tulips

The British told us to put our bulbs in the ground last month. Good advice. Daffodils always need a long time, and by planting them now until the ground freezes hard, they will be late in the spring. By year two, they will be back on track.

Buying bulbs early and getting them in the ground means that they didn't sit in the garage, overexposed to air, allowing them to dry out. But who does this? I like my earth to be a little wet and a little chilly when I am planting spring bulbs in November. And sometimes you can find good deals on bulbs later, if you don't mind that they are a little shriveled from getting too much exposure to air. These are trade-offs, and I think they are little life lessons in patience.

I grew up in Texas, in a period where bulbs were rare for most yards. How pretentious then to call anything a garden unless it was the extra lot where you planted without sentiment loads of vegetables. You did this because you lived back during the Great Depression and there was something comforting in the 1960s and 1970s to have tall okra, potatoes, green beans, squash and tomatoes in the garden outside your house. The world may be going to hell with hippies and urban riots and the war in Vietnam, but outside, on one's own land, was the garden. You will not starve. Tending the garden was not joy but work. Because starvation is something you touched thirty or forty years before, you took this very seriously. This was my grandparents philosophy about gardening. I rejected their idea of gardening as work, and took up with perennials, herbs and roses because I loved them. Outside of tomato plants, and herbs, I haven't been much of a vegetable gardener until recently.

But when I lived in Texas and gardened and decided to have tulips and daffodils, I put the bulbs in the refrigerator (in Texanese, that would be icebox ), for six weeks -- most bulbs like at least six weeks of cold dormancy -- and then I planted them into the mild winter ground. And they came out fabulously. But you should never put tomatoes or apples in the refrigerator along with spring bulbs. The gas from the ripening of these fruits will kill the bulbs. If you must share fridge space with fruits and bulbs, then put the fruit in a sealed plastic bag. But also remember that there are principles to follow, like accepting that cloth napkins are always preferable to paper, and an important principle is that one should never put tomatoes in the fridge. Same for peaches. They like to ripe in the same air and space as us. Or at least at temperatures similar to ours.

What do we do with tulips? Plant them in rows like soldiers, in one solid color or mass? Be asymmetrical and plant odd-numbers of them in clumps? -- another arbitrary principle: in nature, there are no even numbers of plants. To be natural to our eye, plantings must be in odd numbers. Or do we watch a smaller number return each year until one gets only a big old wide bit of foliage in the garden years later, and perhaps every third year a little color bloom pops out of it, a reminder of a dream to have a flourishing tulip bed, a dream now dashed?

Or do we plant them in rows and decide to be as ruthless as the National Park Service in Washinton, where they pull them out after blooming in the spring, effectively making the bulbs one-time annuals?

If you ever go to Colonial Williamsburg, you must visit the Rockefellers private estate on the edge of the CW historical district. John D., Jr. build Colonial Williamsburg about the same time he was building Rockefeller Center in New York . The exhibits about the family and their involvement in CW helps one make sense with this whole fantastic let's turn our town back into an 18th century Colonial village phenomenon from the 1920s and 1930s. The Rs came to CW twice a year, in the spring and in the fall, each time for two weeks. As common for the time when the rich had multiple houses and could afford gardeners, these Williamsburg beds at their estate were planted to bloom for these two week visits twice a year. I do not know the name of the gardener. But that man or woman deserve some recognition. That is artistry beyond the pale. It is ruthless and heartbreaking. Another human rendering of god-like behavior.

The bulbs in the mid-Atlantic region are lovely in spring. The first time I went to Williamsburg was in April back in the 80s. A friend was getting married. It was a time when I, a poor boy from Central Texas, first understood the beauty and power of a region where bullbs and flowering trees/shrubs begin a long triumphant production called spring. It is an unending rollout of gaudy brash colored (and tooth hurting) azaleas and forsythia -- the forsythia come first. Of dogwoods whose salmon pink blossoms always clash with the children's book illustrator color of pink ice cream found in the lovely American redbud (if they happen to bloom at the same time).

Texas has its spring beauty in its wildflowers, where entire fields of meadows and rolling prairie hills change hues from blue to red to white from week to week, but alas in Texas the time and length of fresh, cool green growing takes place in a much shorter time period than mid-Atlantic region, and once the Texas spring is over, the rollout begins of heat, deafening heat, purifying the bones heat. Oh Lord, thank you for the invention of air conditioning. You will need it in Texas, because the heat won't break until the late weeks of September or early October. And that is just too long. Of course the hottest I've ever been in my life was in Boston over the Fourth of July weekend in 1999 or 1998, when the temps hit 100 degrees (F), and nobody there has air conditioning. My partner and I spent a day in the Gardner and the Museum of Fine Art, seeing the Sargent exhibition for a second time after seeing it earlier in the year in DC at the National Gallery, because these spaces were air conditioned. Well, our motivation was increased because they were air conditioned spaces. God, it was hot.

I normally don't play the Texas everything-is-bigger here game, but there is one thing that is definitely better in Texas: air conditioning. I'm sure the same could be said of the other southern and southwestern states where it is essential for survival. It's not true of the midwest or the mid-Atlantic. And forget California. They sold their soul somewhere in the past and got coastal arid temps and a lovely gardening climate. This leads to Hollywood and people who work in the film industry, acting goofy and disconnected from life. And I guess it leads to electing actors as governor, something I would not recommend. But since I don't live there, I shouldn't judge.

Tulips. At the Bishop's Garden at the National Cathedral, they mix all kinds of tulip colors along the perennial border, giving the appearance of multi-colored lollipops in early spring. Never miss an opportunity to enjoy this incredible jewel of a garden, designed by Frederick Law Olmstead, Jr, son of you-know-who. It is just about perfect. Lovely, really.

I have a small well head in my front yard/garden. (The longer I live here, the less lawn, so less yard it will be. I always ending up getting rid of the grass, because God did not put me on this earth to be a sod farmer). This well head is surrounded by a raised bed of dirt and ringed by simple blocks of limestone. The previous owner planted tulips in them. The buds start out orangish red and end up being yellow. In my life, they are the only tulips I've had that grow and thrive and multiply. This is called naturalization, and it is a good thing for bulbs to do that. But that often requires knowing what are the best cultivars for one's own area, and the list is usually a short one. And local nurseries often don't carry them. So think of all the research and planning it can require to get decent tulips. I inherited mine by buying the house. Who knew?

My secret hunch is that because the soil is raised in the small circular bed, the tulips aren't as subject to the incredible wetness of Indiana soils in spring. Being raised, there is good drainage. Not a bad thing for lavender, too, or garden sage or rosemary, all plants that don't enjoy getting their feet wet for extended periods of time. And of course, if you live in Zone 5 now being re-named as 6, you don't plant rosemary, even the fairly hardy Arp cultivar (found in Arp, Texas by a southern herbalist). Or you plant it and realize that it will die. Maybe it will survive one winter. Or on the fat outside, maybe two. But no more than that.

I find it depressing that I cannot grow rosemary here because I've always had large bushes of it, even in Zone 7 of DC. Of course, it's a natural for Austin.

But back to my tulips. So the previous owner picked a good cultivar for this area. And the raised bed makes sense. If I were advising folk about what bulbs to plant, I'd go for daffodils. Or croci and muscari.

Why the rant on bulbs? My parish choir sold bulbs this fall as a fundraiser. In 2002, we sang for a week in residence at Winchester Cathedral and a week in residence at Chichester Cathedral. It's the time when the professional choirs of Cathedrals go on vacation, and in the words of Trevor Beeson, a former Dean of Winchester, those horrid American choirs come and take their place. I don't think ours is horrible. It was a wonderful experience, and we are returning in 2005 to a couple of other Cathedrals if we are all still alive, there is no new Great Depression, and the Church of England still recognizes the Episcopal Church USA. Not big ifs, I think, but nothing is ever certain.

So tonight was a packing night for the bulbs so that we can distribute them on Sunday. I came in on the tail end of this. It's always thrilling to see plants or bulbs in mass quantities. I want to buy and plant them all.

I read briefly online a description of Calvinist theology today. It is based on 5 points, and the first is the phrase of Calvin that I always forget but like to read: Total Depravity. Fine words. What power it must have felt to look out at a congregation and tell them that mankind is totally depraved. Did they flinch when he hurled those words? NPR does the same thing to me each morning when the alarm goes off and the top of the hour news starts to make my stomach hurt. Sometimes, as when, for example, they do five part series on nuclear warheads sitting in wooden sheds out in some corner of the former USSR, with rusty padlocks as the only protection, I cannot listen. Since I have no control over these nuclear weapons and their availability, I have to let go a bit, and pray for all our safety in these troubled times. Aren't all times troubled?

But after reading Calivinist five point theology, I was grateful to be an Anglican/Episcopalian. The acronym for the five points was T-U-L-I-P. Our ambiguity is more comforting than a 17th century agreement that says this is the box of God, for ever and ever. Thomas Cranmer, the author of the first Book of Common Prayer, called ours a "lively" faith, and I take comfort in that we must live in it now, particular now, as the folk who hate the idea of gay people serving in Christ's church raise their attacks.

But that's another post.