The Tulips Are Too Excitable.

I just know that I am going to be one of those overbearingly proud mothers. The kind that takes a picture at every coo, smile and burst of flatulence...who soldiers on in the rain at the sidelines of a soccer field while simultaneously yelling obscenities at the children on the other team.

You know the type [A].

I know this, because at present, in my kitchen, I have been growing three small tulips. I purchased these tulips in March, when they were in full bloom. I bought potted flowers, because I just can't stand the idea of cut flowers. Flowers are - and you'll allow me to be cliched for just a moment - a thing of considerable aesthietic pleasure in this world. For me, they encompass what is beutiful, what is living, and what is reborn. Now, I do understand how a majority of the human race would find showcasing such an artefact to be a pleasureable experience. But I myself - and for the same reason that I could never own a caged bird - detest the thought of severing something so pretty, for the pure selfishness of exploiting it, only to have to watch it die in the end. And while wild flowers do die, they germinate and they grow again the next spring.

So in summation of my horribly philosophical spiel, I would hate to take an ill person cut flowers...I'd want to encourage them to think of rejuvination of life, and not of the inevitability of death.

But back to the tulips. They wilted, as one might expect, on the approach of winter. I was sad because they were red, and I love red tulips, but more importantly, because the only thing I had to look at was a pot full of dirt. So I locked the pot away in a cupboard for six months. No, really. I couldn't bear to look at it.

Last week I remembered the pot, and took it back out with the hope that the bulbs would rejuvinate for spring. I watered it every day, and a few days ago, I noticed tiny green shoots poking through the topsoil.

I was thrilled.

Every day since (and you'll think I am mad), I have watered my tulip buds. I check them obsessively - just to try and gauge whether or not they have grown at all. I open my kitchen window for them, I move them from shade to sunlight and back again, and I empty the dirty plant water. Worse still, I talk to them. Yes indeed.

"Just look at you girls! You'll be flowering within the month!" or "That's the way, tulip dears".

I am as proud as punch of my three little tulip buds. When they flower and wilt, I am sure I will care a great deal more than I did when they were simply store-bought. I'm not quite sure what this all says about commitment, but I am sure it must be something.