A Curved Line

This curved line has never been so clean, so incised. Oh, in my mind's eye it has always been, but in the reality of my garden, no. Even in this picture, there lingers a clump of bells of Ireland to ruin the curve; but they are gone now. And, from just to the left of this picture where my Beauty of Moscow lilac grows unseen to the Japanese peony 'Hanakisoi' (undistinguished from the sea of green on the right), I have dug out a curved bed. Waiting, as it must, for the tulip 'China Pink'.

As I have ordered lilies also, and they are never dug in a timely way for central Wisconsin, the trench lays in wait for delivery of the soft pink tulips that shall be planted in a conga line, like silly pink flamingos to dance in the spring by my silly little pink cottage of a house. I hate having to dig and plant in inclement weather such a Wisconsin can regularly bring to us in the autumn.

Of course, it has rained all day today; the first such day since Handsome Son graduated in May. And sitting on my deck steps tucked as if on purpose under the shelter of my dwarf leaf Artic blue willow in a plastic bag, warning me that it is not a toy, sat my box of tulips 'China Pink' when I arrived home from school today.

When Handsome Son was just three, he used a small toy truck to plant a white swoop of the lily-flowering tulip 'Triumphator'. It was an elegant statement in a side garden done all in white and green. He planted 100 bulbs and they have in a fashion, naturalized in what is now solely his father's yard, but which still shows line, form, and design from the time when we three lived there. Next spring, I imagine the tulips will bloom there.

And, my pink flamingos of a sort will bloom here in the coming spring.

The sunset tonight was all pink and peach and golden around the edges as the sun came out just as it set, to play around the edges of the wispy clouds. The light seemed ethereal, reminding me of a Maxfield Parris painting. Paintings that regularly decorated the floating casino of a boat in the Fox River at Elgin, where those other tulips will also bloom.