Bulb sellers will tell you to rip out your tulips every year and put in new in the fall; but I simply can't be so wasteful. That said, mine do slowly disappear—this is one of only two flaming parrots I have left from probably a dozen or so.

But I lucked out with not one but two days of rain with which to photograph it! The first photo, the one taken with the macro lens, had the added bonus of a tiny shaft of weak sunshine.

flaming parrot tulip, front yard, with a touch of sun; sony ILCE-7c sony 90mm macro; 16may22 approx 8:00am; f/8.0, ev 0, 1/100s, ISO 160 (click for high resolution sharp versions)

According to some quick google research, they can start out yellow and lighten to white; but this one was always white, probably because it's located in high shade; I have one in the back yard that's yellow and red, probably because it gets more sun, though these were certainly red and white on the packaging.^[1]

flaming parrot tulip, front yard, 18may22 approx 16:30; sony ILCE-7c, lensbaby sweet 35 optic swap system, ev 0, 1/160s, ISO 100, WB cloudy.

I'm slowly getting better at focusing the lensbaby, as you can see in the two bottom images.

Another angle with lensbaby: flaming parrot tulip, front yard, 18may22 approx 16:30; sony ILCE-7c, lensbaby sweet 35 optic swap system, ev 0, 1/200s, ISO 100, WB cloudy

So many of my favourite pix are basically being in the right place at the right time...

Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.