springtime

Backyard garden. April 23, 2006.

Tulips were always a sort of theoretical plant to me, a sort of cultural norm that was part of my upbringing if not my direct experience, the same way we in southern california associate snowflakes with christmas while it's actually eighty degrees and sunny. We drew tulips in front of houses in our crayon drawings in kindergarten as a symbol of springtime; they had a canonical depiction, a U-shaped body and a serated top, just the way the sun is circular, yellow, line segments radiating, happy face. But I never really directly experienced them until I moved here. Daffodils, though, I had no notion of, except cut ones sold in springtime fundraisers. In many ways I think California, and, for that matter, the West, still is some kind of frontier, where our inherited culture contains these vestigal remains of experience of previous generations on this side of the country.