Cheap Tulips

Last Thursday, we made our weekly visit to Walmart - this time for soil for potting up the bareroot roses that came on Wednesday from Jackson & Perkins (more on those later). It will be a little bit until I can plant them in the ground, because the area where I want to put them is part of a larger project that we'll begin once the weather decides to make up its mind. (More on that later, too.)

Those people at Walmart are so smart. They put the soil near the plants and flowers. I know they did this on purpose; it's part of The Conspiracy. And this day, they had trays of blooming tulips marked down by fifty per cent. You could buy one bulb for 36 cents or three for 83 cents. There were purples, oranges, pinks, whites, and yellows. The oranges and yellows caught my eye right away, because both of them looked like neither of them could make up their minds if they wanted to be orange or yellow.

I know that for the most part, if planted deeply enough and fertilized, tulips will return spring after spring for several years, but it's not something you should count on. This is one instance where I live on the lucky side of the street, because I've had good luck with my tulips coming up every year, and none of them are Darwins or species tulips. Darwin tulips have a greater reliability for repeat performances each spring, and species tulips can pretty much be counted on to naturalize readily.

Though I had not planned on buying any plants or bulbs this trip, you know how that goes. And these were cheap. I picked out some single yellow ones, and some triple-potted orange ones. There were only four single yellows, so I got those and I plan to intersperse these with the oranges. Just where I am going to do this interspersing I have no idea, but I'll figure that out later. I seem to find myself doing this with almost all the plants I buy. Buy first, plant later... somewhere.

I brought them home, cut the blooms, and put them in water in two different vases. One went to the family room and the other went on the little table at the foot of the stairs in our entry. Spring cheer!

If these never come up in future springs, I have two lovely bouquets that bring a smile to my face every time I look at them. At less than seven dollars total, that's a true bargain.