Tulip Time

Four years ago this past February my husband and I went on a trip to Seattle. I was charmed by all the street corner vendors selling tulips. An hour north of Seattle are tulip fields with rows and rows of tulips, every color in the rainbow. At the Pikes Place market in downtown Seattle there was a craftsman selling these very cool flower pots - so to speak.

It is a piece of local slate with a hole drilled in the center and a small cup placed there. In the cup is a little 'frog' with multiple pins that you stick the tulips in, add water, and viola a very neat sculpture with real flowers.

These Washington tulips seem to make their way to my local Walmart every winter. They are only available from mid January til the end of February.

I love tulips, I would like to have them all over my yard and have tried to plant them. My home is built in a suburb of Omaha, Nebraska, the location of a former cornfield. We have LOTS of wild rabbits. They love tulips, it is salad to them. They keep the little green shoots gnawed off to the ground every spring. So every year when my yard is covered in snow with rabbit tracks everywhere,

I splurge and buy tulips. A new bunch every week for the remaining winter, red, pink, yellow. They are great.

There are lots of tulips in my quilts, as in the Civil War Bride Quilt. I substituted some of the flowers for tulips.

There are, however, no appliqued rabbits in my quilts. None of the folksy little weather vane type jumping rabbit, I have enough of the real thing at my house. I hope they are looking thru my windows and noting the fresh tulips while they are chewing on my frozen evergreen bushes.

Happy Stitching,

Cheri