The tulips are blooming.  After a long, seemingly endless winter, the first bed is in full bloom.  The bed in our office driveway and the beds at the end of the driveway at our home are always the first to show their colors no matter what variety is planted.
Those locations apparently have just the right combination of drainage, sun and shade.
We never know what varieties are planted in the different beds at our home and the office.
Each year, we are pleasantly surprised and look forward trying to decide which color is the most brilliant.  We are starting with a peach colored tulip this year; appropriate for spring in Georgia.
Other beds are giving hints of their own colors.   We have a yellow bed as well as a white bed of tulips on the cusp of being in full bloom.  Several others haven’t given even the first hint of what hue they will display.
Tulips are often associated with the Netherlands. That small country grows over 3 Billion bulbs, most of them for export around the world.   That is where the two thousand tulips we plant each year originate.
While they are a perennial plant in their more natural habit, they rarely last more than one year in southwest Georgia.
In the years since we started planting tulips, I have come to think of them as a striking reminder that spring is almost here.  Like Japanese Magnolias and Redbud trees, they show their colors before most of the other plants flower.  Just as winter seems it will never leave, nature sends us a reminder of the never ending changing of the seasons.
Within a few days, you will begin to see trees budding.  Pollen will appear on our vehicles giving its yellow tint to everything in site.
We’ll have our first truly beautiful day and you will be reminded at just how wonderful spring is in this part of the world.
Even as we are forecast to have our first day over 80 degrees this week, we will also see our first mosquito.
While these pesky creatures are a reminder that nothing is perfect, they can’t begin to dampen the feeling of renewal and rejuvenation that surrounds us as nature awakes in its entire splendor.
The older I get, the more aware I am of just how uplifting the beginning of spring is to our collective spirit. Nature surprises us each year, but it really does the same thing over and over.
The same trees will bud first.  The same colors will inspire us.  The same fragrances will fill the air.
In the busy world that claims our time and seems to run us ragged, now is truly the time to tiptoe through the tulips.   Stop and smell the roses.
From the most common azalea and daylilies to plants not known a decade ago, nature is about to put on a show.
Nothing on Broadway or television can compare to that which nature gives us for free.