Thursday, October 18, 2007

No posts till Tuesday

Off to Dublin--very exciting--only I got derailed just now by the arrival of a mystery gift, a box with no identifying labels re: sender that contains ten packets of ten bulbs each of those Queen of the Night tulips! You know, those black ones--apropos in the sense that I have a black thumb rather than a green thumb, and I am also a fan of a curiously hilarious novel called The Black Tulip, and I believe Harrison Ainsworth may have written a tulip craze novel also that I read some years ago with considerable enthusiasm--but not at all apropos in the sense that I do not have a garden, and also I kill plants very reliably! So if you happen to be reading this and are the sender, please identify yourself so that I can thank you but also let us consider their repurposing in some more immediately useful context...

3 comments:

  1. Have a lovely time.
    There is also Tulip Fever by (from memory) Deborah Moggach or someone whose name is stored next to hers in my brain; and a book by Anne Fine called, I believe, "The Tulip Touch" - aimed at teens.

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  2. Here's hoping you're finding the Dublin experience fabulous!

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  3. Umm...!

    OK, to be fair, I practically begged the stand at the flower market to let me include a note, but, at least in Amsterdam, no really does mean no. At any rate, after a few days of riding my initial wave of elation at having finally found what I imagined to be "the perfect thing," I admit I was a bit crestfallen when it was lovingly pointed out to me that one needed a place to plant 100 bulbs, and that you didn't have one. But they're supposed to be put in the ground in November, so there's not a huge rush to find them a better home.

    It was kind of worth it, though, for the unforgettable image of you being "derailed" by a load of black tulips!

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