Tulip Blossom Quotes

On the warm stone walls, climbing roses were just coming into bloom and great twisted branches of honeysuckle and clematis wrestled each other as they tumbled up and over the top of the wall. Against another wall were white apple blossoms on branches cut into sharp crucifixes and forced to lie flat against the stone. Below, the huge frilled lips of giant tulips in shades of white and cream nodded in their beds. They were almost finished now, spread open too far, splayed, exposing obscene black centers. I've never had my own garden but I suddenly recognized something in the tangle of this one that wasn't beauty. Passion, maybe. And something else. Rage.

This is what history is: all those centuries of bodies, moving over these canals, twisting and blooming into life in these houses, these streets; all that flesh hungering, coming together, separating, continuing, accumulating, relinquishing, aging and breaking down. Bodies as tulips bent to the demands of light, colored into blossom, spent.

A vast field opened like a blossoming tulip, flowers blooming in the rippling airs of spring. High and frothy trees hugged air and sun as they gallantly cast a shade over the earth. On the horizon a florid vessel of mountains trailed to the never-ending, blue as memories distant, poised as statues embroidered into time’s eternal drift.

BOWLS OF FOOD Moon and evening star do their slow tambourine dance to praise this universe. The purpose of every gathering is discovered: to recognize beauty and love what’s beautiful. “Once it was like that, now it’s like this,” the saying goes around town, and serious consequences too. Men and women turn their faces to the wall in grief. They lose appetite. Then they start eating the fire of pleasure, as camels chew pungent grass for the sake of their souls. Winter blocks the road. Flowers are taken prisoner underground. Then green justice tenders a spear. Go outside to the orchard. These visitors came a long way, past all the houses of the zodiac, learning Something new at each stop. And they’re here for such a short time, sitting at these tables set on the prow of the wind. Bowls of food are brought out as answers, but still no one knows the answer. Food for the soul stays secret. Body food gets put out in the open like us. Those who work at a bakery don’t know the taste of bread like the hungry beggars do. Because the beloved wants to know, unseen things become manifest. Hiding is the hidden purpose of creation: bury your seed and wait. After you die, All the thoughts you had will throng around like children. The heart is the secret inside the secret. Call the secret language, and never be sure what you conceal. It’s unsure people who get the blessing. Climbing cypress, opening rose, Nightingale song, fruit, these are inside the chill November wind. They are its secret. We climb and fall so often. Plants have an inner Being, and separate ways of talking and feeling. An ear of corn bends in thought. Tulip, so embarrassed. Pink rose deciding to open a competing store. A bunch of grapes sits with its feet stuck out. Narcissus gossiping about iris. Willow, what do you learn from running water? Humility. Red apple, what has the Friend taught you? To be sour. Peach tree, why so low? To let you reach. Look at the poplar, tall but without fruit or flower. Yes, if I had those, I’d be self-absorbed like you. I gave up self to watch the enlightened ones. Pomegranate questions quince, Why so pale? For the pearl you hid inside me. How did you discover my secret? Your laugh. The core of the seen and unseen universes smiles, but remember, smiles come best from those who weep. Lightning, then the rain-laughter. Dark earth receives that clear and grows a trunk. Melon and cucumber come dragging along on pilgrimage. You have to be to be blessed! Pumpkin begins climbing a rope! Where did he learn that? Grass, thorns, a hundred thousand ants and snakes, everything is looking for food. Don’t you hear the noise? Every herb cures some illness. Camels delight to eat thorns. We prefer the inside of a walnut, not the shell. The inside of an egg, the outside of a date. What about your inside and outside? The same way a branch draws water up many feet, God is pulling your soul along. Wind carries pollen from blossom to ground. Wings and Arabian stallions gallop toward the warmth of spring. They visit; they sing and tell what they think they know: so-and-so will travel to such-and-such. The hoopoe carries a letter to Solomon. The wise stork says lek-lek. Please translate. It’s time to go to the high plain, to leave the winter house. Be your own watchman as birds are. Let the remembering beads encircle you. I make promises to myself and break them. Words are coins: the vein of ore and the mine shaft, what they speak of. Now consider the sun. It’s neither oriental nor occidental. Only the soul knows what love is. This moment in time and space is an eggshell with an embryo crumpled inside, soaked in belief-yolk, under the wing of grace, until it breaks free of mind to become the song of an actual bird, and God.

Spring has come with little prelude, like turning a rocky corner into a valley, and gardens and borders have blossomed suddenly lush with daffodils, irises, tulips. Even the derelict houses of Les Marauds are touched with color, but here the ordered gardens have run to rampant eccentricity; a flowering elder growing from the balcony of a house overlooking the water, a roof carpeted with dandelions, violets poking out of a crumbling facade. Once-cultivated plants have reverted to their wild state, small leggy geraniums thrusting between hemlock-umbels, self-seeded poppies scattered at random and bastardized from their original red to orange to palest mauve. A few days' sunshine is enough to coax them from sleep; after the rain they stretch and raise their heads toward the light. Pull out a handful of these supposed weeds, and there are sages and irises, pinks and lavenders, under the docks and ragwort.

While disease had thus become an inhabitant of Lowood, and death its frequent visitor; while there was gloom and fear within its walls; while its rooms and passages steamed with hospital smells, the drug and the pastille striving vainly to overcome the effluvia of mortality, that bright May shone unclouded over the bold hills and beautiful woodland out of doors. Its garden, too, glowed with flowers: hollyhocks had sprung up tall as trees, lilies had opened, tulips and roses were in bloom; the borders of the little beds were gay with pink thrift and crimson double daisies; the sweetbriars gave out, morning and evening, their scent of spice and apples; and these fragrant treasures were all useless for most of the inmates of Lowood, except to furnish now and then a handful of herbs and blossoms to put in a coffin.

February gave way to March, with its bursting colors of a too-early spring. Such warm weather was a welcome contrast to the near freezes of the previous year, as if this newborn century was impatient to exhibit its glory and all the unforeseen changes it would bring. Alice’s heart expanded at the sight of white snowdrops in lieu of absent snow; the vivid purples of wild petunias, pincushion flowers, and irises laced with the varying hues of tulips; and the glorious flowering shrubs---azaleas and camellias---lighting up the shade, covered entirely in blossoms as if they nurtured blooms but no leaves. She had seen the prairie carpeted in wildflowers, but this display was unlike that wild one of nature, somehow singularly intimate and welcoming, whereas the prairie engulfed and dwarfed her. There is not one thing that humankind has done on earth that is equal to one square inch of this, she thought.

FROM THE WAVERLEY KITCHEN JOURNAL Angelica - Will shape its meaning to your need, but it is particularly good for calming hyper children at your table. Anise Hyssop - Eases frustration and confusion. Bachelor’s Button - Aids in finding things that were previously hidden. A clarifying flower. Chicory - Conceals bitterness. Gives the eater a sense that all is well. A cloaking flower. Chive Blossom - Ensures you will win an argument. Conveniently, also an antidote for hurt feelings. Dandelion - A stimulant encouraging faithfulness. Frequent side effects are blindness to flaws and spontaneous apologies. Honeysuckle - For seeing in the dark, but only if you use honeysuckle from a brush of vines at least two feet thick. A clarifying flower. Hyacinth Bulb - Causes melancholy and thoughts of past regrets. Use only dried bulbs. A time-travel flower. Lavender - Raises spirits. Prevents bad decisions resulting from fatigue or depression. Lemon Balm - Upon consumption, for a brief period of time the eater will think and feel as he did in his youth. Please note if you have any former hellions at your table before serving. A time-travel flower. Lemon Verbena - Produces a lull in conversation with a mysterious lack of awkwardness. Helpful when you have nervous, overly talkative guests. Lilac - When a certain amount of humility is in order. Gives confidence that humbling yourself to another will not be used against you. Marigold - Causes affection, but sometimes accompanied by jealousy. Nasturtium - Promotes appetite in men. Makes women secretive. Secret sexual liaisons sometimes occur in mixed company. Do not let your guests out of your sight. Pansy - Encourages the eater to give compliments and surprise gifts. Peppermint - A clever method of concealment. When used with other edible flowers, it confuses the eater, thus concealing the true nature of what you are doing. A cloaking flower. Rose Geranium - Produces memories of past good times. Opposite of Hyacinth Bulb. A time-travel flower. Rose Petal - Encourages love. Snapdragon - Wards off the undue influences of others, particularly those with magical sensibilities. Squash and Zucchini Blossoms - Serve when you need to be understood. Clarifying flowers. Tulip - Gives the eater a sense of sexual perfection. A possible side effect is being susceptible to the opinions of others. Violet - A wonderful finish to a meal. Induces calm, brings on happiness, and always assures a good night’s sleep.

The rapid growth of Message- combined with an outpouring of florists offering consultations in the language of flowers to the streams of brides Marlena and I turned away- caused a subtle but concrete shift in the Bay Area flower industry. Marlena reported that peony, marigold, and lavender lingered in their plastic buckets at the flower market while tulips, lilac, and passionflower sold out before the sun rose. For the first time anyone could remember, jonquil became available long after its natural bloom season had ended. By the end of July, bold brides carried ceramic bowls of strawberries or fragrant clusters of fennel, and no one questioned their aesthetics but rather marveled at the simplicity of their desire. If the trajectory continued, I realized, Message would alter the quantities of anger, grief, and mistrust growing in the earth on a massive scale. Farmers would uproot fields of foxglove to plant yarrow, the soft clusters of pink, yellow, and cream the cure to a broken heart. The prices of sage, ranunculus, and stock would steadily increase. Plum trees would be planted for the sole purpose of harvesting their delicate, clustered blossoms and sunflowers would fall permanently out of fashion, disappearing from flower stands, craft stores, and country kitchens. Thistle would be cleared compulsively from empty lots and overgrown gardens.

It is the only way I can express in words my clear and definite perception that one thing is quite distinct from another; that there is no logical connection between flying and laying eggs. It is the man who talks about “a law” that he has never seen who is the mystic. Nay, the ordinary scientific man is strictly a sentimentalist. He is a sentimentalist in this essential sense, that he is soaked and swept away by mere associations. He has so often seen birds lay and lay eggs that he feels as if there must be some dreamy, tender connection between the two ideas, whereas there is none. A forlorn lover might be unable to dissociate the moon from lost love; so the materialist is unable to dissociate the moon from the tide. In both cases there is no connection, except that one has seen them together. A sentimentalist might shed tears at the smell of apple-blossom, because, by a dark association of his own, it reminded him of his boyhood. So the materialist professor (though he conceals his tears) is yet a sentimentalist, because, by a dark association of his own, apple-blossoms remind him of apples. But the cool rationalist from fairyland does not see why, in the abstract, the apple tree should not grow crimson tulips; it sometimes does in his country.

...a flash of colour amid a shadowy, gloomy background made me stop, a riot of colour and texture that compelled me to face the gilded frame. I'd never- never- seen anything like it. It's just a still life, a part of me said. And it was: a green glass vase with an assortment of flowers drooping over its narrow top, blossoms and leaves of every shape and size and colour- roses, tulips, morning glory, goldenrod, maiden's lace, peonies... The skill it must have taken to make them look so lifelike, to make them more than lifelike... Just a vase of flowers against a dark background- but more than that; the flowers seemed to be vibrant with their own light, as if in defiance of the shadows gathered around them. The mastery needed to make the glass vase hold that light, to bend the light with the water within, as if the vase did indeed have weight to it atop its stone pedestal... Remarkable.

On account of their puny size and disappointing taste, in France wild pears are known as "poires d'angoisse" or pears of anguish. In Versailles, though, in the kitchen garden, pears are bred for pleasure. Of the five hundred pear trees, the best usually fruit in January--- the royal favorite, a type called "Bon Chrétien d'Hiver," or "Good Christian of Winter." Each pear is very large--- the blossom end engorged, the eye deeply sunk--- whilst the skin is a finely grained pale yellow, with a red blush on the side that has been touched by the sunlight. It is known for its brittle, lightly scented, almost translucent flesh that drips with a sugary juice; that soaks your mouth when your teeth sink into it. The gardener here, Jean-Baptiste de La Quintinie, says that when a pear is ripe its neck yields to the touch and smells slightly of wet roses. This winter they have not ripened, though, but have frozen to solid gold. Murders of crows sit on the branches of the pear trees, pecking at the rime of them. They have become fairy fruit; those dangling impossibilities. What would you give to taste one? Spring always comes, though. Is it not magic? The world's deep magic. March brings the vast respite of thaw, that huge unburdening, that gentling--- all winter's knives and jaws turning soft and blunt; little chunks of ice riding off on their own giddy melt; everything dripping and plipping and making little streams and rivulets; tender pellucid fingers feeling their way towards the sea; all the tiny busywork. And with the returning sun, too, sex. Tulips, first found as wild flowers in Central Asia--- named for the Persian word "tulipan," for turban--- thrust and bow in the warm soil of Versailles, their variegated "broken" petals licked with carmine flames. The early worm-catchers begin their chorus, skylarks and song thrushes courting at dawn. Catkins dangle like soft, tiny pairs of elven stockings. Fairy-sized wigs appear on the pussy willows. Hawthorn and sloe put on their powder and patches, to catch a bee's eye.

It’s just a still life, a part of me said. And it was: a green glass vase with an assortment of flowers drooping over its narrow top, blossoms and leaves of every shape and size and color—roses, tulips, morning glory, goldenrod, maiden’s lace, peonies …

This girl has no idea how easy she is to read. She’s never learned to put up walls, to protect herself. She’s as vulnerable as a bed of tulips. I intend to stomp through her garden, ripping the blossoms from the ground one by one.

I love Johannesburg – like one loves and protects a fragile puppy, like one removes weeds from beds of blossoming tulips and roses. I am drawn to its formless danger, the lurking disquiets of a big city, by how minute and faceless I have become in the vast frontiers of its palaces and dungeons, how my stargazing crawls by unnoticed by my countrymen. There are other stargazers too, there must be, real stargazers who camp and live and thrive in the wild: lantern carriers and owners of books and celestial maps about the history and unknown charms in the world of stars. There must be true worshippers and disciples of these heavenly fires, these celestial corpses that have long died, exploded into trillions of graveyards that adorn the night skies. There seems, if I concentrate long enough, to be a certain secret that draws me to the stars: their ancient silence, their insistence on commanding attention without shouting from rooftops, unlike the shamelessness of thunder and rain, unaffected by their distance or determination. Stars are quiet – arrogant, maybe – but also of a particular crispness that takes refuge in every pore, every fragment of every hair that covers every slope and plane of the body. It is possible that Michael K is peering from behind the night clouds, content not to be bothered. He has seen the zealots and charlatans coming from miles away, preserved his soul in the most elementary of ways: the ways of silence.

2012 Continuation of My Message to Andy   …I do recall that Albert was also taken ill, but why weren’t you, Zac or Monsieur Dubois? Maybe the waiter only added LSD to the soft drinks and not to the beers you guys had.               I did enjoy our outing to the Dutch countryside with Dr. Fahrib and the gang. The tulips were in full bloom, and so were the poppies and wild flowers. It was a beautiful spring day, wasn’t it? These blossoms were indeed a sight to behold, not to mention the heated debate that went on between Dubois, Jabril and the gang. Those two were at each other’s throats, even though most of their pronouncements held similar universal truths. Their debate was amusing, yet they got themselves into a twist. You would have thought a fisticuff would occur if the sheik or Mario weren’t there to keep peace. I’m sure you, the gallant arbiter, would have stepped in to stop the contretemps, if we were there to witness it all.☺               Our entourage gained much insight into various religious beliefs. I’m sure we would have found it highly educational if …

In planting a border, always keep in mind the fact that it should be blooming from May to November. Put in the plants according to height, the tallest, of course, at the back and the lowest in front, filling the front also with spring-flowering bulbs, Daffodils, Tulips and Narcissi, which will blossom and be over before the plants come on. You will thus have the longest succession of bloom. If the border is quite wide—from four to six feet—and perhaps one hundred and fifty feet long, it will hold a surprising number of plants.

Portrait of the Author" The birches are mad with green points the wood's edge is burning with their green, burning, seething—No, no, no. The birches are opening their leaves one by one. Their delicate leaves unfold cold and separate, one by one. Slender tassels hang swaying from the delicate branch tips— Oh, I cannot say it. There is no word. Black is split at once into flowers. In every bog and ditch, flares of small fire, white flowers!—Agh, the birches are mad, mad with their green. The world is gone, torn into shreds with this blessing. What have I left undone that I should have undertaken? O my brother, you redfaced, living man ignorant, stupid whose feet are upon this same dirt that I touch—and eat. We are alone in this terror, alone, face to face on this road, you and I, wrapped by this flame! Let the polished plows stay idle, their gloss already on the black soil. But that face of yours—! Answer me. I will clutch you. I will hug you, grip you. I will poke my face into your face and force you to see me. Take me in your arms, tell me the commonest thing that is in your mind to say, say anything. I will understand you—! It is the madness of the birch leaves opening cold, one by one. My rooms will receive me. But my rooms are no longer sweet spaces where comfort is ready to wait on me with its crumbs. A darkness has brushed them. The mass of yellow tulips in the bowl is shrunken. Every familiar object is changed and dwarfed. I am shaken, broken against a might that splits comfort, blows apart my careful partitions, crushes my house and leaves me—with shrinking heart and startled, empty eyes—peering out into a cold world. In the spring I would be drunk! In the spring I would be drunk and lie forgetting all things. Your face! Give me your face, Yang Kue Fei! your hands, your lips to drink! Give me your wrists to drink— I drag you, I am drowned in you, you overwhelm me! Drink! Save me! The shad bush is in the edge of the clearing. The yards in a fury of lilac blossoms are driving me mad with terror. Drink and lie forgetting the world. And coldly the birch leaves are opening one by one. Coldly I observe them and wait for the end. And it ends.