In the Sping of 2016, my mom divided a bunch of the hostas she had planted in her little condo-garden and gave them to me to transplant in my own garden. The hostas struggled that season . . . as newly transplanted hostas do . . . but I had every confidence that they would come back strong the next year. I knew my mom’s hostas would thrive in my garden.

What I didn’t know . . . is that my mom would die that very fall.

The next March – very near my birthday, I was looking out my kitchen window at my still-hibernating garden and I noticed . . . a random little red flower. All by itself. In the middle of . . . not really much else. I went out to investigate . . . and discovered a lonely little red tulip. That I never planted. It looked strangely like some little red tulips my mom had had in her garden — an early blooming variety.

And then it dawned on me. One of her little tulip bulbs had tagged along in one of her hostas!

And then I fell apart.

Because I was really struggling with my birthday that year — the first without my mom. And, suddenly, she was there. In my garden. Sending me hope and joy and birthday wishes.

These little tulips are not the beautiful, cultured variety most of us are used to seeing these days. They are small, clumping, naturalizing tulips that come back every year (most cultured tulips do not). They “self-seed” (“self-bulb?“) and will clump up and spread slowly over the years . . .  if you let them. My mom loved tulips. We always had some in our garden when I was a little girl . . . so she was a perfect match for her adopted city of Holland, where it’s almost legally mandated that all residents plant tulips in their gardens. (That is not true, by the way; I am being facetious.) (But there are tulips everywhere in Holland). My mom had a variety of tulips planted throughout her little garden borders – but her favorites were those little red early-blooming tulips. Such joy in a winter-weary garden!

(She loved volunteering at the Tulip Time information booth each year. Here’s a picture of her – she’s on the left – with a pal in their full Tulip Time regalia.) (I sewed her costume, by the way.)

Anyway. Right on cue, and just around my birthday last week, my mom came to wish me a happy birthday again this year . . . in the form of little red tulips.

There are two good-sized clumps of my mom’s tulips in my garden now. They bring me immense joy . . . and sadness at the same time.

Hope always shows up in a garden.
(It really does.)

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If you want to learn more about “naturalizing” tulips/perennial tulips, here’s a little article.

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You may notice that I haven’t offered a Happy Hour for the last couple of weeks. (Or . . . maybe you haven’t.) Sometimes, blogging ideas run their course, y’know? Fewer readers were stopping by to share their joys, so I decided to retire the concept for the time being. Maybe I’ll bring it back once in a while, but I’m hoping that you’ll continue the practice of noting your joys . . . for yourselves . . . anyway.