Take a look at these tulips

I just love bulbs–not the kind you screw into your lamps, the kind that grow in the ground. They hide under the soil all summer and fall. Just when you’re about to go nuts with too much winter, they pop up and start blooming. You don’t have to do anything. They just keep showing up.

Somebody planted tulip bulbs in my garden long before I moved to this house. I thought I dug all the bulbs out when I started my great gardening plan a couple years ago, but I guess I missed a few. Right now, I’ve got white tulips and some that look like rainbow sherbet. About the time they start to fade, the wild poppies will appear. Later in the year, if I’m lucky, the gladiolas will bloom. What a gift for someone who gardens about once every six months.

Some folks are more serious about tulips. The town of Woodburn, OR, about 45 minutes from Portland, hosts an annual tulip festival in April. I know, we missed it. Mark your calendars for next year. (But we’re in time for the rhododendron festival, which happens May 21-23 in Florence, OR.)If you’d like to get your own tulips planted for next spring, check out The Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm, which grows tulips by the acre and takes orders online.

It rains about 80 inches a year around here, but in the spring, when the sun comes out and everything’s in bloom, we look around and know we’re living in paradise.

Author: Sue Fagalde Lick

writer/musician California native, Oregon resident Author of Freelancing for Newspapers, Shoes Full of Sand, Azorean Dreams, Stories Grandma Never Told, Childless by Marriage, and Up Beaver Creek. Most recently, I have published two poetry chapbooks, Gravel Road Ahead and The Widow at the Piano: Confessions of a Distracted Catholic. I have published hundreds of articles, plus essays, fiction and poetry. I'm also pretty good at singing and playing guitar and piano. View all posts by Sue Fagalde Lick