Tulip Season In The Flower Garden

Tulip season has already come and gone in the flower garden, and I’m just now sitting down to share it.

April moved quickly this year. The heat came early, along with a stretch of dry days that had me out watering more than I expected. In between that, we were planting, shifting things around, and trying to keep up with a season that didn’t slow down.

One morning brought a light frost, and the sky was a deep orange. I remember standing there looking at the tulips, a little sad in the early light. Knowing tulips, I knew once the sun reached them they would look as though the frost had never been there. But in that moment, with the sky and the frost together, it felt like something I didn’t want to miss.

The flower house always becomes the center of it all this time of year. The worn wood, the chipped paint, the light coming through the windows in the morning.

So much of what I photograph begins in moments like that.

Tulips bending in different directions from the frost.

Daffodils dying back.

Nothing perfect, but real.

Photography has always been a way for me to hold onto that. Not to create something separate from the garden, but to share what it feels like to be in it.

This is something I’ve been thinking more about lately, and something I wrote about in The Art of Slow Storytelling. A quieter way of noticing, and letting moments be what they are without trying to change them.

Tulip season has been over for a while, and the peonies are now in bloom, but looking back through these photos brings me right back to those mornings.

I’m not sure how it happens but, gardening does something to the soul.

Most of the flowers we grow have such a short season. We can’t control the weather, and often it feels like it’s over before we even realize it.

But there’s always next year, and we’re already planning to plant more tulips.

kindly, xo

Jane