I waxed eloquent recently about how even when blossoms fall, the beauty of the plant is still there. True for cherry trees, but not for tulips. On the walk to work over the past few weeks, I enjoyed watching a couple of tulip plantings emerge and burst forth into colorful displays of joy. How sad to see the ravages of time as they passed their peak. Stripped of the flower, there’s nothing attractive about a nude tulip. You have the urge, when you see a shivering crowd of these poor souls, to put a blanket or maybe a little screen around them, preserving what dignity remains, saving them from prying, pitying eyes.
These first tulips lived on the corner of Constitution and 14th.
The show begins
Gradually revealing their beauty
A practically perfect display of tulipocity
In their full, brilliant glory
It happened so fast
The second tulip colony I visited each day is at the south end of The Ellipse.
Big ole pots o' pretty
The President's splendid neighbors
Avert your eyes! Have you no shame?
Put them out of their misery. Please
Poor bare things, their former noble beauty, a memory. Nothing left for us but to move on, grateful the tulips visited our planet and enriched us, for a spell, with elegance, grace, style.
