These are the tulips that came up in my back yard last month.

I have about a hundred bulbs in the ground and these are the THREE that made it over the winter and through the deer, o my. I decided to leave them in the earth, where they grew, as there were only three. It felt like madness and greed – a great reaping – to cut them and bring them in. If I should be so edacious, there would be nothing left on that little patch of brown, and winter would fade into green without ornament. Leave them. How considerate of me.

But here’s the deal: I only actually LOOKED at them when I took this picture.

The rest of the time they were out there, unnoticed but for the bees.

And it made me kind of mad, in an injusticey kind of way.

 

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there…
does it make a sound?

If a tulip grows unseen…
does it open to the sun?

(save your scientific retort… this is poetic analogy. go with it.)

 

So, when the lilacs came into bloom, the polite gardner in me – the one that takes a few blooms (and only from the back of the bush) to fill a single vase, and leave as little a mark as possible – got out every vessel I could muster,

and went to town, hacking off the most beautiful blooms I could find, and stuffing their chambers too full to be seen beneath:

It was fragrant vindication.

 

and the great lilac bush?
The one whom I had delicately pruned and cautiously whittled all these years?

 

She seemed oblivious to the violation, and I’d like to believe, actually grew larger, and more aromatic by coming into my home – in every corner of my home – and imparting joy just by being.

Being near. Being smelled. Being seen.