Good Cheer

I've been waiting since mid-January to buy my first bunch of Tulips. The flower shops bring them out almost before Christmas these days but I still cling rather fiercely to the teachings I received from Marcus Crane and Green Florist, where I spent an idyllic 8 months working as a commercial florist. Tulips are a spring flower. Like renunculars, daffs and hyacinths, tulips are the fairy dust to break the spell of Winter, and having them in the house will induce a certain state of hypnotic cheer. Buying tulips before one's soul has fully digested, absorbed and despaired of Winter is sure to cause major cataclysmic upheaval in the Universe at large and generally mess with your head.

So I tenaciously wait it out, breezing nonchalantly past buckets of the tight, green buds on the Wintry sidewalks, begging to be taken home. I don't even notice their fresh, come hither eyes on me as I dash past the displays at the front of the Kitchen Table as I run in for milk and bread. Until April. Until now, when they sit, three bunches of happiness, on my counter, loving me with every opening petal.