It’s Finals Week at Keene State College and the second week of a new semester for my online classes, so this week I’m doing the usual juggling act while one set of classes winds down and another set ramps up.
Normally when I teach on campus on Tuesdays, I take a walk before my noon literature class: my chance to see what’s blooming, check out the local chalk-folk, and otherwise root for the home team. Today, however, I didn’t have time for a midday walk: instead, I graded online papers and tended to other teaching tasks while collecting take-home exams and a handful of essay portfolios, the bulk of my end-term paper pile being due on Thursday.
During days like this when my to-do list is long and hours seem short, I’m grateful for the carefully tended horticultural plantings that brighten even a quick stroll across campus. Today I didn’t have time to tiptoe through tulips, but I did have time after collecting exams and before heading home to snap a few shots of the tulips right outside the hall where my office is located: a quick trip to a place where flowers are symmetrically shaped and exotically colored.
May 6, 2008 at 7:49 pm
Gorgeous. (And good luck getting through your piles of exams and papers.)
May 7, 2008 at 5:23 am
Yes, I’d never seen tulips quite like these, which I thought were spectacularly lovely. And yes, the exams & papers will get done eventually…
May 7, 2008 at 6:42 am
They are lovely! Some of the tulips around here are splaying out, in their final stage, making me think at first they were something else – not quite “tulip” shaped anymore. But there seem to be plenty around these neighborhoods in various stages of bloom. It’s like fairyland here in the spring!
May 7, 2008 at 7:12 am
Michael Pollan has a section on tulip breeding in The Botany of Desire, so I knew a lot of effort has gone into hybridizing many different colors. But I’d never noticed the variation in petal shapes, with that last star-shaped one looking more like a double-trillium than anything I’d consider “tulip like.” But there they were: a fairyland exceeding all expectations.
May 8, 2008 at 1:39 pm
Those are beautiful! Our tulips are withering green, headless sticks…