Several years ago (and by that I mean like 6) one of my roommates decided to plant tulip bulbs in the front of Ivy House. The area he selected was a 2.5 by 3.5 foot dirt section outlined by cracked and crooked bricks. It was flanked by the driveway and the road so it was about 1 part soil and 2 parts roadway debris. Despite the rather inhospitable environment, the tulips thrived.

Every April they sprung up with gusto, decorating the front of Ivy House and immediately (though temporarily) making the place look slightly less tenement and slightly more well kept suburban home. I loved watching the tulips come up. I loved how incongruent they were with the cracked driveway, the rotting wooden porch stairs, and the general disrepair of the facade they graced. They were going to come up and be beautiful regardless of their surroundings. Perhaps they even knew that because of their surroundings they would shine a little bit brighter. With Ivy House as their backdrop, they were surely to be noticed. And don't tell me flowers don't care about such things. If they didn't they care about being beautiful they would just be grass.

Anyway, every year they would pop up and every year I would take a zillion and one photos of them. I would wait for one of those perfect spring days, the sort we only have after 5 days of rain and 45 degree weather. Those days where the sky looks like the opening scene of the Simpsons, all perfectly blue with little fluff balls of clouds floating by. On those days I would grab my camera and take as many pictures as my memory card could hold. I shot them from every angle, sometimes contorting myself to in order to eliminate the cracked driveway and the rotting wooden stairs from view.


I would do this for about 20 minutes until I was convinced there were no new way to capture these flowers, colors, and shapes. Then I would make Kim sit through a viewing of all zillion and one pictures. If you know Kim, she did this with infinite and encouraging patience.

Well, I've moved out of Ivy House. It has been returned to its original owner who, for reasons unknown to anyone who ever crossed the Ivy House threshold, decided to actually move into the house instead of having it razed and then starting a new. Several weeks after he moved in I had to go by the house to pick up some odds and ends. It was a late October evening and by then the tulips had long since abandoned their claim to the dirt patch. What should have been there was . . . well . . . a dirt patch. An empty dirt patch anxiously awaiting the following April when it would once again be transformed into a flower garden. Instead, what was there were 4 squat roundish boring shrubs (perhaps boring and shrubs is redundant). Jeff Scott had torn up the tulips and replaced them with shrubs. He managed to tear up the only beautiful not run down part of Ivy House. I stood there for a minute almost in shock and decidedly mournful.

But such is life. It wasn't my house anymore so I no longer had any topiary decision making authority. Time to move on. Let Jeff Scott enjoy his shrubs and I'd always have my 900,000 tulip photos.

So, in case you were wondering what in the world the point of this post is . . . the point is that . . . there are tulips at my new house (well its Kelly's new house but you know what I mean). The other day, tulips starting popping up all over the front lawn. It was such a sweet sight to see the little buds poking through the ground just waiting to erupt into colorful little buds of joy. Yeah, yeah. I know, I am being a over the top but whatever. So I toted my camera out this week-end, because we had one of those perfect spring days, and I took my zillion and one pictures of the Lexington Tulips. They are quite lovely and a suitable successor to the Ivy House Tulips. I'll spare you the full library of photos (Kim is in Spain so Kelly stepped in and was equally patient and encouraging)