One of the great joys of Spring is the season of the tulip. Tulips grow well in Washington in more colors and varieties than one can imagine. Today’s deposit into the ‘Joy Jar’ is the Tulip.

A tulip doesn’t strive to impress anyone. It doesn’t struggle to be different than a rose. It doesn’t have to. It is different. And there’s room in the garden for every flower. You didn’t have to struggle to make your face different than anyone else’s on earth. It just is. You are unique because you were created that way. Look at little children in kindergarten. They’re all different without trying to be. As long as they’re unselfconsciously being themselves, they can’t help but shine. It’s only later, when children are taught to compete, to strive to be better than others, that their natural light becomes distorted.

Marianne Williamson

But I have always thought that these tulips must have had names. They were red, and orange and red, and red and orange and yellow, like the ember in a nursery fire of a winter’s evening. I remember them.

Neil Gaiman

Here tulips bloom as theyare told; Unkempt about those hedges blows An English unofficial rose.

Rupert Chawner Brooke

“The fountain is my speech. The tulips are my speech. The grass and trees are my speech.”

George T. Delacorte

“The business of a poet, said Imlac, is to examine, not the individual but the species; to remark general properties and large appearances. He does not number the streaks of the tulip.”

Samuel Johnson

Every person is like a single tulip. While they may blend when together, each one is special in its own light.

Daniella Kessler

Tags: delacorte, Dr Wilda, Flower, Garden, Joy Jar, marianne williamson, nature, neil gaiman, plants, rupert chawner brooke, Tulip