Tulip Envy

April 11, 2025 — Pat Bertram

In a garden, as in life, envy is not a good thing. One can appreciate the object of that envy, though one must be sure to be grateful for what one has, not what one wishes one had.

That’s cryptic, I know. Or rather, it would be if not for the title of this piece. Tulip envy. Yep. That’s the truth of it.

I was at a friend’s house the other day and was gobsmacked by the sight of her tulip garden. I stood there, frozen with awe, drinking in that vision. Except for photos in gardening magazines, I’d never seen such perfect tulips, such vibrant colors, such an awesome display of floral pulchritude. To say I was envious is . . . well, it’s redundant considering I’ve already mentioned the envy part a couple of times. (Just so you know, all the photos in this blog are pictures of my tulips.)

That’s when I realized it’s okay to be appreciative, but it’s not okay to compare. Her tulip garden is decades older than mine, so it’s had time to mature. It’s in the shade, which around here is necessary since the sun, even on cool days, tends to be intense. (And one of my tulip gardens is always a bit sickly since it gets more sun than the poor things can handle). And anyway, seen for what they are, each of my little displays is perfect.

Another thing I learned is that what you get is what you get. So much of tulip gardening in the dry high plains is a matter of weather and hence beyond our control. This year, for the first time since I’ve lived in this house, we had heavy snows at the beginning of November, followed by a few half-hearted snowfalls rather than the reverse, which is what we usually get. Because of that early snow, tulips that lay dormant last year burst forth with color this year. Even my poor sun-drenched garden put forth a few lovely blooms.

So, I’m celebrating my blooms. Focusing on that which is right beneath my feet.

At least when it comes to tulips, that is. What else is right beneath my feet is an incipient forest. A couple of springs ago, my neighbor’s ash tree flooded my yard with an inch-thick coating of seeds. I cleaned them up the best I could. Twice. (Because there was a second seed flood shortly after the first.) As it turns out, whatever conditions produced tulips this year also produced ash seedlings. Dozens and dozens of them. I can’t just let them be, can’t pull them up like weeds because some of those root systems are a foot deep, can’t kill them because I’d also kill the surrounding ornamental plants. So . . . dig, dig, dig.

And then, boo hoo, some of my newly sprouted lilies froze in the last frost. Something else I had no control over. They were eager to start growing during the warm days, but the poor things conked out during the frigid months.

With all that going on, it’s truly much better to concentrate on my lovely tulips!

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

Posted in gardening, life, photography. Tags: ash seeds, envy, envy/gratitude, things my garden taught me, tulips. 4 Comments »

Just One Word

April 9, 2025 — Pat Bertram

Tulips!

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

Posted in gardening, life, photography. Tags: tulips. 2 Comments »

The Joy — and Heartbreak — of Gardening

April 17, 2023 — Pat Bertram

My yard is greening up nicely. The grass you see in the forefront of the photo is the grass I planted last fall after digging up the Bermuda grass that had taken over the area. The new grass survived the winter nicely. I was going to wait to see how the grass does in the unrelenting sun of summer before I planted more seeds, but I decided to go ahead and do some of the work now. The blue seed is where the old grass didn’t come back after dying off last summer. A lot of the lighter green is a larkspur invasion that took over where the grass along the path died. The larkspur will run its course in the next couple of months, so I’ll be able to plant more grass next fall.

I fretted about the lawn, not sure what to do about the grass that died, but since I often find myself standing at the back window looking out at the shimmering emerald of the lawn in front of the bench and feeling calm settle over me, I decided it was worth keeping up with the lawn as a mental health aid, if nothing else. At the worst, I’ll have to replant some of it every year for a while as well as digging up the invading Bermuda grass, but you never know — this seed might be as heat tolerant as it claims to be. Still, the sun in this corner of Colorado can be fierce, made even more searing by low humidity and high winds, so I won’t blame the grass if it has a hard time establishing itself along the path where it gets no shade. Oddly, even the plants that supposedly need to be grown in full sun do better around here with a bit of shade, perhaps because the shade keeps the moisture in the soil a bit longer.

Because of the volatile weather pattern this spring — temperatures ranging from the twenties to the nineties with almost daily high winds — most of my tulips are stunted. The exception is this small patch that is in the shade most of the time.

I am hoping that if I water the remaining tulips copiously on the very hot days they will still bloom, but I have no idea what will happen. It could be too late in the season for them to recover.

Gardening in this corner of Colorado is certainly a challenge, but I am learning, paying attention to what grows best and where, what need extra care, and what plants that don’t seem to want to thrive no matter what I do. Luckily, plenty of plants seem to like it here, which makes the whole project a joy. Heartbreaking at times, of course, but overall, a joy.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

Posted in gardening, life. Tags: heat tolerant grass, lawn as a mental health aid, planting grass, plants and shade, plants and sun, tulips. 1 Comment »

Finally — Some Color!

April 13, 2023 — Pat Bertram

It’s taken a while, but it’s great to see a bit of color in my yard. I’m not sure if the other tulips will bloom — they don’t seem to like the ninety-degree weather we had, so I’m celebrating whatever beauty I find in my yard.

To paraphrase Shakespeare, though they be but few, they are beautiful!

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Posted in gardening, life. Tags: first tulips, tulips. 7 Comments »

White Landscape

January 29, 2023 — Pat Bertram

I’d fallen back into the habit of blogging every day, so yesterday, when WordPress didn’t give me a prompt or suggestion of what to write about, I decided it was a sign to take a day off.

Habits are interesting — even good habits tend to take over your life. My life, anyway. I start out blogging every day, and soon the habit becomes a thing in itself that needs to be fed, and finally, the habit becomes a mandate. I begin to feel I must post something, and so a pleasant habit becomes a lot less pleasant. I don’t like feeling pushed, and so yesterday I pushed back.

Or it could be that yesterday I was just lazy. There’s a lot of that in my life right now. It’s hard to want to do anything when it’s so cold, and when every time I look out the window, I see the same thing — leftover snow. I can’t remember a year where the snow lingered so long. Colorado is known for its sunny winter days and quick melting snow, but this year? Not so much. It’s not even that we got a lot of snow. For the most part, the snow came from a mere two storms. Right after the first heavy snow had slowly melted, a second storm came and dumped six or more inches. And that snow is still out there.

I’m hoping that the constant moisture will help with spring flowers, but I fear it will also help bring out the weeds. But no — I don’t want to think that way. I simply want to dream of the pretty flowers that will brighten my life in a month or two.

Tulips, maybe.

Perhaps even crocuses.

Or wildflowers.

Anything but the white landscape I’ve been seeing for so many months.

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Posted in blogging, gardening, life. Tags: crocus, dreaming of flowers, leftover snow, snow not melting, tulips, wildflowers. 10 Comments »

Blessed Are They Who Can Laugh at Themselves

April 11, 2022 — Pat Bertram

I have to laugh at myself. Whenever I write that I think I’m getting the hang of this gardening thing, something happens to make me realize I am a far cry from being a master gardener.

Even one tulip can make a person think they know what they are doing, but the truth is, only the tulip really knows what it is doing. The rest of us are just along for the ride. I am, anyway.

Dealing with grass is a whole other story! (The lawn kind of grass.) I was proud of myself yesterday for finally getting the lawnmower to work and the grass cut, but this morning . . . eek.

The place looks like a kid just gave himself his first haircut, with some patches cut way to short (before I figured the grass was too thick to cut short) and other patches way too long (the edges I haven’t yet gotten around to trimming).

If that weren’t bad enough, I seem to have missed a few spots in the middle, maybe where the wheels matted the grass, and since it was so thick, it couldn’t spring up right away to be cut on the next lap.

Interestingly, I had to pause in writing this blog to go to work, and there I happened to come across a quote: “Blessed are they who can laugh at themselves because they will never cease to be amused.” Isn’t that the truth!

Luckily, not only do I have something to be amused about, and not only will the grass grow again so I can do it right, but I have tulips in my yard.

So, it’s possible, amusement aside, I really might get the hang of this gardening thing. Eventually.

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Posted in gardening, life, photography. Tags: badly cut grass, growing tulips, laughing at myself, learning to be a gardener, tulips. 2 Comments »

Slushfall

March 22, 2022 — Pat Bertram

The weather couldn’t decide what it wanted to do yesterday. First it rained, then it snowed, then it slushed. I had not experienced a slushfall before, but apparently, it was too cold for rain, too warm for snow to form flakes, and so what fell were globules of slush.

This wouldn’t have been a problem except for the poor drainage in this town. Apparently, some functionary at one time decided it was a good idea to get rid of the culverts and hump the streets instead. This tends to keep the streets dry, because moisture drains to curbs and street gutters, but since the gutters don’t drain as they should, water tend to puddle, making it impossible to cross the street on foot in wet weather.

Normally, I solve the problem of flooded gutters by walking in the street, but at the cross streets, there are bumper-scraping dips on either side of the road, which drain slowly, so on days like yesterday, not only do the gutters overflow, so do those deep dips. The flooding was so severe, I had to walk way out of my way to find places to cross the rivers of slush to get to work. By afternoon, there was so much slush, I wouldn’t have been able to find a way to avoid sloshing through the flooded areas, and I dreaded walking home in the inevitable sodden boots and socks.

The place where I work is two blocks from my house. I have walked those two blocks in deep snow, frigid winds, icy rains, moonless nights, horrendous heat. No matter what the weather, I have turned down offers of a ride because I wanted that small adventure.

Well, the slush defeated me, so last night, I gladly accepted a ride. It was the only way to get around and through the flooded areas.

Fearing that the slush would freeze overnight, I went out in the dark and shoveled the walk. I also shoveled my ramp from the front door to the sidewalk as best as I could without scraping off the paint and non-skid strips. My best wasn’t all that good because today I have an icy slide all the way down to the sidewalk, which sort of defeats the purpose of a handicap ramp. Luckily, the sun is out, so it won’t be long until the ice melts.

I have no idea what impact this weather will have on my tulips. They’d already started poking through the ground, but perhaps the temperatures didn’t drop below freezing long enough to have an effect. But there’s nothing I can do about it. The poor things are on their own.

As for me, I can only hope the melting will help drain the slushy street gutters and dips so I can manage to get to work with relatively dry feet. If not, well, I’ll bring dry shoes and socks so I won’t have to spend the day in sodden footwear.

These are last year’s tulips. With any luck, they will bloom again this year.

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Posted in gardening, home, life. Tags: flooded street gutters, poor drainage, shoveling snow, slushy weather, tulips, walking home from work. 4 Comments »

A Single Blossom

April 11, 2020 — Pat Bertram

I am not one who thrives on controversy. I just want to go along to get along, which is why I steer clear of hot issues such as politics or religion. Unfortunately, every once in a while I say something in a blog that hits people wrong, and I end up getting censured for something that was nothing more than an offhand remark.

Because the current situation continues to bewilder me — the repercussions, the ramifications, the lies and erroneous projections that were used to cause irreparable harm to so many people — I’ve been voicing my concerns. I haven’t meant to offend anyone with my comments and questions and half-facetious remarks. I’ve just been trying to sort through all the conflicting information we’re presented with, to mention the concerns I have, and to write of the things I have been thinking about. I’ve come to no conclusions, have no strong opinions. I’m simply . . . wondering.

The comments left here on this blog have been thoughtful and show an understanding of my dilemma, but those left elsewhere have been hurtful, so I’m eschewing the whole matter today and going with a topic that no one can chastise me for.

Tulips.

So far, only a single tulip has bloomed in my yard, but what a beauty!

Although a whole field of tulips can be dramatic, It doesn’t take huge numbers to make an impact. A single blossom can be just as beautiful and important and meaningful.

Which is good, considering all I have at the moment is this one flower.

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