Patrick J. Heck

Picture this: it’s January, the sun set at 2pm, and everything but the hollies in your yard is dead. Your brother, a farmer and landscaper, comes over for dinner. Somewhere in your conversation he mentions tulips. Next thing you know, you have 87 tabs open as you scroll through tulip bulbs on clearance sale, and your husband is whispering “that one, no, that one” with each new tab you open.

That’s what happened to me. My brother and husband are the true Plant Guys—my husband’s even pursuing his master gardener title. They’re usually the ones cornering me into breaking out the credit card and buying something new for the yard. But I consider myself at least a friend to plants. I know a little bit about growing thing. Enough not to buy several hundred bulbs two weeks into January.

I know better. I know those bulbs should be planted earlier to give them the best chance at blooming in their first year. I know we should wait till the end of this grow season before dropping new bulbs in.

That is, I knew. And I pressed “purchase” anyway.

Fast forward a week. A hundred or so bulbs (I managed to narrow it down) showed up in cardboard boxes, most of them in good condition. We got them in the ground quick. A serious winter storm was on its way, and we wanted to use the coverage plus all our fallen leaves to incubate.

The snow came. It left seven inches of ice behind that took three weeks to melt. I wish I was kidding. In its wake, my husband and I completely forgot about our tulips.

We bought this house at the end of 2024. One of its beds was full of bulb plants: daffodils, irises, and lilies. It made sense to add our tulips to the choir. As they did the first spring we lived here, the daffodils shot up early, pops of white and yellow amidst the dainty pale green of an early Virginia spring. The lilies and irises followed. They’re not in bloom yet, but soon.

No tulips.

That’s okay. We planted them late. And we forgot about them. Maybe we don’t get tulips till next spring—we’ll live.

Except… it was a crazy winter storm. What if the ice killed all the bulbs, instead of incubating them? The first three weeks of March was a rollercoaster of emotions, watching more established bulb plants pop up, while our tulip zone stayed empty. Not even a suggestion of tulips.

Then, one morning this week, we had nubs. By afternoon they were full stems. By the next day there were dozens of them.

How rewarding! Their growth was too delayed to flower this year, but at least we could rest easy knowing the bulbs survived well enough to sprout leaves. Over the next few days, they filled out the bed, bringing us one step closer to the final vision of our home garden.

Today, one of them opened up.

He’s ridiculous. His stem isn’t even a full inch tall. But he’s beautiful. My phone has no chance of capturing the depth of his color, the striations of dark pink and purple weaving together to make our lone, silly tulip. We’ll probably lose him to the wet weather soon. It’s supposed to rain for the next 12 hours. Still, he’s ours. He’s here. He’s proof that a smidge is enough to bloom.

Expect plenty of garden posts over the next few months. You might even get a guest post from my husband.