Tiptoe through the tulips...

When I was a little girl in Washington, DC, we lived in an apartment. A little patch of weedy grass and some bushes in the front and another patch of weedy grass, some dirt, and an alley in the back. Sometimes my mother would plant some marigold seeds 'cause she liked pretty, but I don't recall that they did all that well what with every kid and animal in the neighborhood trampling about. You certainly wouldn't call it a garden.

One Spring, as I wandered 'round and about the world I lived in, I came upon some houses with the prettiest flowers I ever saw. They were blooming prolificly in raised beds atop a retaining wall right along the sidewalk, so that as I walked by, I could reach right out and touch them. I never saw so many pretty flowers! And I never saw such flowers as these, with these big, pretty blooms sitting on top of long, green stems. Imagine that! And they were right there, waiting to be picked. And so, wanting to take these pretty flowers home to my mommy, I did... I skipped along the sidewalk and snapped the heads off of every damned one of those tulips, adding insult to injury by leaving every single stem standing there buck nekked!! Oh - my - God! What a rotten kid!

In my defense, I really didn't know any better at the time. I never saw a garden before. I didn't know about the love and care it took to grow the things. Heck, I didn't even know I should've picked the stem to go along with the flower!

All these many years later, I still feel tiny pangs of guilt when I think of it. Now I know what it's like to patiently wait allll winter long for Spring to come. To watch and check and check again until the crocus and the daffodils and the tulips finally appear in all their glory. And then to have some wretched child come along and destroy them all in one fell swoop?? Oh, the agony!!

I oughta send in one of those postcards to PostSecret.