Tulips

When my husband and I first got married, we lived in an apartment.  It was a new place and the landscaping consisted of grass.  And frankly, I didn't care one bit.  We had a few plants inside and that was good enough for me.

About a year later, we bought our first house.  It was a small house and we figured we would live there for about five years and then we would be able to upgrade to the house where we would raise our family.  We purchased the house at the end of May and were all settled in by mid-June.  I spent that first summer tearing off wallpaper, priming, painting, decorating, and everything in between.  When school started again in the fall, we had just found out that I was pregnant.  We were extremely happy, but I was exhausted.  I didn't do any planting that fall like I had intended.  In March, we were blessed with a new baby boy and let's just say life didn't slow down to allow for time to plant anything that spring either.  That fall, we thought about it.  We even looked through catalogs and picked out bulbs to plant along the sidewalk.  I told my mom I wanted tulips and hyacinths to line the sidewalk up to the porch.  She agreed that it would look nice and we discussed how many bulbs I should purchase.  And...life happened but planting bulbs did not.  The next spring I actually purchased the bulbs, after the catalog showed up in my mailbox again.  I was determined to get them planted that fall.  By the time fall rolled around I was very pregnant with my second child.  My mom ended up planting the bulbs for me.  She came over, took one look at me sitting in the rocking chair and feeling like a whale and she went into action.  She went to the garage and pulled out a lawn chair.  She found the small shovel, a rug to kneel on, and the bags of bulbs I had ordered.  She sat me in the lawn chair and taught me how to plant the bulbs.  She did the entire thing and I learned as much as I could by watching best I could around my belly.  For ten more years I enjoyed those tulips and hyacinths each spring.  Each spring I would remember sitting there and watching while my mom planted them and how happy I was that she just did it for me...knowing they probably would never have happened without her help.

Fast forward thirteen years.  Four kids and eight years after we had planned, we finally upgraded to that next house.  We bought the house in August, moved in at the end of September, and were settled enough to enjoy the fall colors around us.  There are trees all around our house and a wooded area behind it.  It was beautiful with all the reds and oranges.  But, I was most excited to see what would arrive in the spring.  I knew the former owner, a science teacher and outside lover, had planted many things around the house and it would be a great surprise to see what would arrive.

That spring I watched carefully for signs of life popping through the ground.  I was delighted to see daffodils pop up, and excited about the little purple flowers that dotted the ground cover in front of the porch, and happily watched the bleeding hearts and hostas grow.  But no matter how hard I looked, I never found any tulips sprouting anywhere.  I found a catalog in my mailbox last year and even dog-eared several pages.  I had my tulip bulbs all picked out, but they never got ordered.  Now this year, on our second spring, I am wishing I had gotten some in the ground.  I have these pretty little peeks of spring popping up around the front porch, but they aren't the tulips my mom planted.

I may need to call in some reinforcements in order to get it done.  But...I won't be looking around a pregnant belly this time, so I guess I will have to get my mom the lawn chair so she can supervise while I plant those bulbs.