In a Vase on Monday: The Envy of the Rose

   I wanted to post another garden update last week but didn't have the time since I've been so busy with transplanting, weeding, mowing, etc! Hopefully there will be a few moments for an update later this week, but no promises! The tulips are really at their best right now, so of course they are the main ingredient in today's vase. I was a little uncertain how this would turn out since I don't have much experience with arranging them, but I guess it's kinda hard to go wrong with a flower so lovely! 
  I can't look at a tulip without thinking of the envious rose in Thomas Fuller's Speech of Flowers:

​"There is lately a Flower (shal I call it so? In courtesie I will tearme it so, though it deserve not the appellation), a Toolip, which hath ingrafted the love and affections of most people unto it; and what is this Toolip? A well complexion'd stink, an ill savour wrapt up in pleasant colours. As for the use thereof in Physick, no Physitian hath honoured it yet with the mention, nor with a Greek, or Latin name, so inconsiderable hath it hitherto been accompted; and yet this is that which filleth all Gardens, hundreds of pounds being given for the root thereof, whilst I the Rose, am neglected and contemned, and conceived beneath the honour of noble hands, and fit only to grow in the gardens of Yeomen."
 
​  Of course, the Rose need not be jealous. There is plenty of room in my heart and my garden for both. Anyway, they don't even bloom at the same time! 
​   This arrangement also includes a few daffodils. These were growing in a rather out-of-the-way place so I thought they could be better admired indoors. I planned to add a few branches of apple blossoms, but alas! all the wild apple trees around have their flowers just out of my reach! So I used willow branches instead.

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Overhead view...

Close-ups of some of my favorites (both in the vase and in the garden!)

I went out after sunset Saturday night to take some more pictures, and discovered somebody hiding amongst the tulips! Can you spot him?

Zooming in...

I wish you all a pleasant week in your gardens. Don't forget to visit Rambling in the Garden to see all the lovely flower arrangements that will be shared today!