Spring color quest (1): March flowers brought May showers

“May flowers” came in March’s near-record warmth here this year, and long before Memorial Day, New York’s flora had replaced much of its flower color with leaf green in shades of spring and even summer. Combined with the stretches of gray overcast we’ve had since March, the weather left me longing for more color at times, although I didn’t realize it until I noticed that color was on other people’s minds, too.

Around March 6, looking something up on the Huffington Post site for a NYC client, I stumbled upon an article about a Hindu festival of color called Holi. It looks like a a holiday I would happily embrace. I went to one of New York’s Little Indias to see what I could see, but I was too late.

Coloured powder cakes Hindus celebrating Holi (photo from The Huffington Post)

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Tulips dream and photos

I remembered this dream from yesterday after checking my email a little while after I woke up yesterday. A friend here in New York had forwarded a series of photos of tulip fields in northern Holland, with the subject line “The Netherlands in May.” I suddenly remembered the dream (I had already remembered a different one) and realized, of course! The Holland connection for the dream should have been obvious to me, given the upcoming conference in Kerkrade, Netherlands, of the International Association for the Study of Dreams. (Also, the caption mentioned Tulip Mania— “Their dazzling colors are thanks to the years in the 17th century when tulip mania swept the globe and  the most eye-catching specimens changed hands for a small  fortune”—and Robbie Bosnak had referred to Tulip Mania in his January 30 talk for IASD-NYC.)

Here’s the dream:

Sunny windowsill, like in my WPR [waking physical reality] kitchen; I’m facing to the right. I think, “I should pull out that dead avocado [as in WPR].” I look to my left, at the avocado plant, and discover that the young leaves of a number of tulip plants are showing in the pot, around the stem of the avocado. “Oh! I forgot I planted tulip bulbs there. I guess I can’t pull up the avocado until the tulips are done.”

(Feelings) Surprised. Impressed that I made such good use of the space in the pot, and pleased to anticipate seeing tulips–a nice surprise. But I’m disappointed about not being about to get rid of the avocado, which has clearly died and is beyond my help.

Interesting that that email caption about Tulip Mania goes on to say something I didn’t know, but somewhat parallels the combination of flowers and food in my dream’s flower pot: “But like a Rainbow, this colorful landscape is a short-lived phenomenon. When the flowers are gone, the land  will be cultivated for a rather more mundane crop of  vegetables The Netherlands produce more than nine million bulbs a year.”

I’ve found the same photos on a couple of blogs—not credited to a source in either place–but they certainly are beautiful. Click on the following photo to get to more of them:

Tulip Fields in northern Holland (unattributed photo at Tourism on the Edge)

What this dream leads me to do:

I won’t be in Holland in May (but June, I hope!)…so what about tulip festivals locally? A bit of Googling finds a few in May:  in Albany (Saturday, May 7) … and in Huntington, LI (Sunday, May 1). In Manhattan, the West Side Community Garden (West 89th Street between Amsterdam and Columbus) had its “day of [planting] 10,000 tulips” in November, so as spring warms up, it’s bound to be a beautiful place to visit. I haven’t checked the Brooklyn and Bronx botanical gardens, but there are sure to be at least some tulips showing up in each. Time to get out and get some color!