Spring Tulips in My 2021 Pandemic Garden

In early November 2020, I planted about 100 bulbs in my first year pandemic garden. My elbow has never been quite the same after all that digging, but it was well worth the nagging pain that comes and goes with over use. Having lived in my apartment since fall 2018, I had not gardened at all. But like many stuck at home from the COVID pandemic, I found myself longing to garden so that I could be outside and not around other people. Who knew back then that COVID would drag out so long. I didn’t.

I was delighted by the bulbs that sprouted up last spring, and spent a lot of time last spring and summer photographing the flowers in my garden. I did series of the same flowers from bud until they passed on. I did series of pollinators feeding on the flowers in my gardens. I whiled away the time, staying safe at home, with my gardens and my camera.

Flowers have a life cycle, like all living things. It’s fascinating in my mind to watch flowers go through their stages. There is beauty in each stage. A spent flower often has as much character as the perfect flower in bloom.

It’s early March 2022, and what I hope is the last of the snow for this year, is melting in my yard. Before the last two storms we got I had spring bulbs starting to peak out of the soil. Worried for their survival, I covered them with garden debris – stems and leaves, from last fall. Gratefully I found yesterday that my bulbs had mad it through the snow, the cold and the wind. They will thrive. I know this in my heart. And this year there will be new bulbs to enjoy watching and photographing, as I planted another 50 or so in the fall. Elbow be damned, I say. I must garden and I must continue my photographic studies of the life and stages of flowers. I see beauty, and I must get behind my lens and capture what I see with my unique eye.