A Feast for the Eyes

It happens every year....  Spring gifts us with tulips in every color of the rainbow, and then the rains come.  Exuberant winds blow through the garden, and in only a day or so, the tulips are colonies of waving stems unadorned by petals and stamens.

I adore tulips in the fullness of their blooming, and the camera loves them too, but they are loveliest as they are coming apart and drifting in the wind like little silken boats.  Coming to rest on the earth, the blooms form masses of confetti petals, scarlet and gold, pink and creamy white, sometimes a purple as dark as night.

Mozart devotee and lifelong tulip lover that I am, I planted the dark purple tulips called "Queen of the Night" again last autumn, but nary a one came up.  Perhaps the midnight Queens taste like wine - their sleeping bulbs are always the first to be snatched by squirrels.