jane brocket

ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

Besides ease of growing, time of flowering, high resistance to disease and vagaries of weather, enormous range of colours, value for money, variety of shape and habit, fascinating history, new launches every season, simplicity, stylishness, gorgeousness, beauty, and general fabulousness, I also like tulips because they change as they grow. This is one of the best reasons for growing them to pick and bring indoors.

Because once you have a vase full of tulips or even just a single stem in a milk bottle, you have the pleasure of watching the changes that occur as the flowers continue to grow in height, as the petals enlarge, spread out, change colour, go darker, go paler, develop stripes and featherings and shadings, and open to reveal amazing interior patterns and splodges and bases. Even in their dying throes, tulips are flamboyant and extravagant, throwing back their petals, stretching out, and revealing all.

In a short space of time they go through almost as many changes as David Bowie has in his career.

infinite variety

Age does wither tulips, but custom does not stale their infinite variety, as Shakespeare might have said. This morning's pick makes an unusual mix, but it's one that's more than the sum of its parts.

Despite the loveliness of the tulips, today I feel assailed by many things so it might be best to adopt the approach Adrian Mitchell took in his poem Celia, Celia: 

When I am sad and weary,
When I think all hope has gone,
When I walk along High Holborn
I think of you with nothing on.

(It was used years ago in the wonderful Poems on the Underground series, and it always cheered me up when I read it on a tube train. I once went to an AM poetry reading - he was great - and he recited this to an audience who clearly expected more verses and just didn't get the brevity and wit.)

peanuts

I think much of my philosophy of life is derived from the Peanuts cartoons. There was a real craze for them in my early - formative - years at senior school. I particularly liked the way the characters dealt with disappointment, the laconic style,  the dry humour, the way the world of adults was turned on its head and exposed as something of a fraud.

I also read the Happiness is... books and cartoons, in which the answer was something like 'a warm blanket' or 'a sad song'. They showed me that happiness comes from things you can so easily overlook while misguidedly seeking something greater, more glamorous, more lasting. In fact, the cause of happiness is often peanuts, something apparently small, trifling, and ordinary. Charles Schulz taught me a useful early lesson, one that's stood me in good stead ever since.

So, no matter what else is going on (Simon and I are dealing with very serious illness in both our families at the moment), there can still be moments when it's possible to fill in the blank in the phrase 'happiness is...'.

With 'tulips'. 

Or 'lime-green spring leaves'.

Or 'flowers on the kitchen table'.

Or 'more tulips'.

 

And, perhaps, 'not trying to define happiness'.

points of view

[photo by Simon]

Simon and Phoebe kept me up to date with tulip happenings while I was away, and were wonderfully enthusiastic about me getting back and seeing how the raised beds had exploded with blooms and colour in such a short time. It's lovely that they knew how bowled over I would be and, while they aren't as devoted to tulips as I am, they both enjoy them. Phoebe loves picking them, and Simon - deservedly - basks in a planting  job well done.

They came out to take photos with me this morning after I'd done some picking, and it's interesting to see how their points of view are different.

[photo by Simon] 

[photo by Simon]

Plus, they can take photos of me.

[photo by Phoebe]

 

wherever i lay my hat

...or my glasses or my book or whatever, that's my home. And as I'm away for three days, I have brought the early morning's tulips with me (they weathered the 220 mile journey very well).

It's such a short season, why would I want to be parted from them?

[iPhone photos. Paul Young version of 'Wherever I Lay My Hat (That's My Home). I loved him when he was with the Q-Tips.]

 

enfin

The first tulips. Although there have already been some non-picking species tulips, these are the first I've cut. Unusually, they are vibrant and deeply coloured - normally the first tulips out are pale, shy, shortish single earlies (although there are two of that type in this bunch). They look lovely with the various narcissi which are still going strong.

Shakespeare repeated very important points three times in his plays, so I'm putting up three photos of this morning's glories just to emphasise how happy these flowers make me.

Sunshine and tulips. I just can't get enough.

delight in the detail

[Tailor's sign in Hepworth's Arcade]

Maybe Hull has more interesting details than other places, or maybe I'd just got my eye in this time. But everywhere I went, I found plenty to delight and intrigue and entertain.

[joke shop in Hepworth's Arcade]

[light filtering through stained glass windows by Walter Crane in Holy Trinity Church]

[pew ends, every one different]

 

[original trident railings outside the Maritime Museum]

[Tower cinema faïence]

[impressive flower stall at the railway station]

[lettering, Guildhall]

[one of the best street names ever, and a great book title used here and here]

And so much more.

spotting a trend

[Hull's own colour of telephone box]

I wouldn't exactly call myself a trend-spotter, but it wasn't difficult to see  the main trend in Hull.

Hull has one of the best old towns in the country, full of wonderful C18, C19 and C20 architecture. It's generally in pretty good condition, too, and hasn't be altered or 'improved'. But the city centre keeps moving further away from the docks and harbour (by my reckoning, Hull is on its fifth centre in around 125 years) and the old centres are becoming more and more like mini ghost towns. There are so many 'For Sale' and 'To Let' signs that you begin to accept them as part of the exteriors and facades. But when you stop to look properly, you realise there are many amazing buildings just sitting there, empty and unwanted, because they are in the wrong part of town. In another time or city, they could perhaps be occupied, treasured, and cared for. But here in Hull, the trend is for shine, glass, and metal, money is in short supply, and the qualities of lovely old brick and stone and terracotta and elegance and proportion and style are mostly ignored by the local businesses and population. 

 

It's a trend I'd rather not spot.

daft about daffs

[picking now]

While tulips are biding their time, the daffodils are busy stealing the show. My mistake when ordering has turned out to be an inspired error as we have an abundance of cheerful, silver-white 'Mount Hood' daffodils to delight us. More is very much more in this case.

In fact, the tulips' tardiness has played into the hand of the daffodils. Although I've been growing daffs for years and love the way they are so dependable, bright, and willing to come back year after year, I may have taken them a litte for granted. But this spring, I've been looking at them more closely as there has been nothing to compete with them, and the more I look, the more I find to like.

[my planting, Simon's pot arrangement]

Besides the drifts and pots of 'Mount Hood', I've grown ten or so varieties and am now beginning to refine my taste and choice. I still don't like pink/coral trumpets and I'm not keen on sulphur-yellow daffs, but I do like tall, large-cupped and trumpet types in shades of white, cream and primrose-yellow with orange, tangerine, lemon and saffron coronas. 

[my new favourite, 'Las Vegas', white and lemon, tall, upright and showy]

I also planted a bag of the common grape hyacinth (Muacari armeniacum] which I now prefer to the fancier varieties. This is another reliable bulb which  adds punctuation dots of blue to groups of daffodils, and is great value (7p a bulb).

And I tried a few new bedding hyacinths for blocks of colour and wonderful scent. This is this year's stunner, Peter Stuyvesant, which is an incredible shade of deep, deep, blue with a hint of purple. I saw it in the bulb fields in Holland last year, planted by the thousand, almost knocking you out with the smell, and although I have a modest/paltry planting of ten bulbs, they are still as eye-catching.

All of which goes to prove that there's a shiny silver lining to the cloud this spring, 

stand by

The tulips are suffering arrested development. It amazes me how late they are; this time last April, they were at their peak, if not slightly past it. This year we are still waiting for action, although the small, pretty, species tulips have been nodding at me for a week now.

So here are some standby flowers as we stand by for tulip season. Seen at the solid, elegant and light-filled Hull Paragon Station ('the last of Britain's great barrel-vaulted glass-and-iron railway stations'), now 'Paragon Interchange'. It has a beautiful Edwardian tiled ticket hall with a wood-panelled ticket office in great condition (now unused) and a statue of Philip Larkin, the 'Hermit of Hull', on what looks like a surfboard.