My six-year-old granddaughter was spending Saturday afternoon with me, as she often did when her mother had many errands to do. Luckily for both of us, we shared a love for flower gardening. Lucky for me because I didn't have to find endless ways to keep her occupied and lucky for her because she was discovering the joy of gardening, something her mother had little time to show her.
Very quickly, she learned the process of planting seeds, nurturing them with both water and plant food and reaping the rewards of their colorful blooms smiling back at her. In fact, she became so interested in growing flowers that she made it her job to greet the mailman when she visited to check for the arrival of my new seed catalogs. I was very impressed.
One afternoon we sat looking through the latest catalog together and she became excited over a picture of multi-colored tulips.
"Grandma, look at these!" she said with excitement, "Can we get some and plant them in our garden?"
"I don't see why not. I’ve never planted tulips but Joe's Nursery must sell them." I replied.
So we hopped in my car and drove to the nursery. She and I picked out about half-a-dozen pouches of tulip bulbs--different colors and varieties. We then returned home where she proceeded to introduce them to their new friends.
"Zinnias and petunias, meet the tulips,” she said, holding up the bulbs for all to see. She dug a small hole with her spoon and buried the bulb with dirt.
"Oh no honey, that's not deep enough," as I read the label on the pouch, "We need to make holes about this deep." I held one hand above the other to show her the distance.
Halfway through our digging, she sat back on her heels and asked, "Grandma, if we just kept digging and digging and never stopped, what do you think we'd find?"
I smiled--remembering when I asked that same question to my mother as a child. "Well we'd end up in China, on the other side of the world." She sat staring at me and then at the holes in the ground.
"Humph! That's too far for me to dig."
I agreed with her and we finished planting. She watered the garden, giving an extra gulp to the tulips before we called it a day.
Three weeks later, neither of us could see any progress in the tulip department. Not one little sprout. She looked up at me as if she had just opened a Christmas present filled with coal.
“Where’s my tulips?” she pouted.
I surely didn’t know but I took a guess.
“Maybe the bulbs were bad. Let’s go back to Joe’s Nursery and buy some new ones.” She happily agreed.
An hour later, we finished planting our second crop of tulips and crossed our fingers. She also crossed her eyes, which made us both laugh.
Another three weeks passed and still no sign of our colorful little friends. My granddaughter was beside herself.
“Well this is a rip-off!” with her hands on her hips. “We need to go back to Joe’s and tell him he has deadbeat bulbs!”
I stood, pondering what could possibly have gone wrong—we did everything right, so it has to be the bulbs. I let out a deep sigh.
“Let’s go inside and have lunch sweetie,” I offered. “Let me think about this for a bit.”
After a quick soup and sandwich, I noticed the mailman pulling up outside. My granddaughter went out to meet him as I stood by the door.
“Hi there,” greeted the postman, “There’s a new flower catalog for you in here,” handing her a large stack of mail.
“Big deal,” she replied with a scowl.
“What’s wrong? I thought you loved those catalogs,” he probed.
She shrugged and told him about the disappointing experience of planting tulips.
“Hm,” he scratched his head. “My wife plants tulips every year and she never has a problem. You do know they have a top side and a bottom side, right?”
She turned to me, looking like a wood plank had just bonked her upside the head.
“No…” her voice trailed upwards.
“Well then, maybe that’s the problem—you planted them upside down.”
As the mailman drove off down the road, a smile returned to her cute little face. I took the pile of mail from her and put on my gardening gloves. We both marched outside to the garden.
“Well now, let’s dig these all up so we can turn them around.” I announced, much to her surprised dismay.
“Oh no Grandma, we can’t do that!” she objected.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because,” staring down at the empty flowerbed, “we don’t want the Chinese families to wake up tomorrow and find all their tulips gone!”
Now, how could I argue with that? So, we drove back to Joe’s Nursery and eventually proved the old saying to be true—third time’s a charm!
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Copyright 2010 by Janet Cipolli. All Rights Reserved.
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