Tulips - the rollercoaster.

When you grow a natural product you are the mercy of the Gods or mother nature!

There is nothing that I feel this more with than when growing Tulips. Its a year long journey that makes me feel every emotion possible.

So on a particularly fraught morning I wrote the following…

Tulips - the rollercoaster

November 1st dig a grave like trench with the soil heaped on the tarp but you’re not there for the end of a life it’s the start. Hundreds of bulbs lined up shoulder to shoulder waiting for their moment. Earth heaped back on and the wait begins. 

But the farmer can’t close her eyes and relax as there are voles who feast on them, tulip fire, it can be too hot, to wet, too everything! 

Then in late winter the farmer is afforded some hope. The small green tipped peaks of the tulips break the surface of the soil. It’s going to be ok! 

Wait! There are deer and rabbits and ducks bottoms and cats who make beds of them. We are mot safe yet!

Then there is rain and more rain and standing water and then heat!! So much heat. You leave the plot for a weekend and come back to hundreds of tulips ready NOW!!

Weeks earlier than planned you activate mission ‘sell tulips’, you flood social media with them, you mail your customers and pray that they sell.

They don’t at first - ‘oh god what’s the point I am never doing tulips again. That’s me decided they are off the menu here! Look how hard they are to grow! Look how expensive they are, and they come out the ground so muddy! They are done!’

You pick a bunch for the kitchen they smell delicious, their peony like blooms open and look like a Dutch oil painting. They grow in the vase and look elegant till their last moment. You say to yourself ‘Aren’t they beautiful?’. Uh oh! You are swooning over them and falling in love again.

Then they sell - the florists want them, the bunch’s fly out at the farm shop, Mrs smith says they are the best in Yorkshire. 

Aren’t they incredible! 

Maybe they stay, maybe just buy less - let’s do that! 

Its May and the summer is inching closer and the tulips have gone now, the late spring early summer flowers have taken over. And you miss the beautiful colours. 

Then on a sunny late Spring morning your phone pings and the email title is ‘order now’ and you do. Double from last year and it’s starts again…