Today

BY BILLY COLLINS

If ever there were a spring day so perfect,
so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze

that it made you want to throw
open all the windows in the house

and unlatch the door to the canary’s cage,
indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,

a day when the cool brick paths
and the garden bursting with peonies

seemed so etched in sunlight
that you felt like taking

a hammer to the glass paperweight
on the living room end table,

releasing the inhabitants
from their snow-covered cottage

so they could walk out,
holding hands and squinting

into this larger dome of blue and white,
well, today is just that kind of day.

It wasn’t quite that kind of a spring day, but one good enough. I take good enough these days, any day.

I’ve been writing so much – time to zig-zag through the tulip fields instead. Typical Pacific Northwest rain-heavy clouds held off for a most uplifting photoshoot among the avatars of spring.

Zig-zag came to mind, when looking at the many shapes of leaves in the rain drenched fields.

But I was also zig-zagging through categories:

THE FLOWERS:

Red,

Yellow,

And the pinks, with particularly interesting stems for some:

THE PROPS:

The Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm has grown into a huge business over the decades; what used to be a small farm is now offering during bloom season a veritable circus. Wine-tasting, gift shops, tents for food and purchases of all kinds of stuff, not just bulbs, steam engine demonstrations, you name it. Great place to spread an infectious virus on the weekends, with the mask mandates dropped and people coming by the hundreds if not thousands, crowding around the wine bar.

On a Monday afternoon, though, it is glorious. Even the fake windmill elicits smiles…and the props are perfectly color-coordinated.

THE PEOPLE:

The short set varied from adventurous to shy to bored. The older ones definitely had a thing for dress-up of some kind.

THE STAFF:

People there are extremely friendly – here is the driver of the little train that brings you from entrance to the far end of the fields. He stops and takes pictures on iPhones for those who can’t get out themselves.

Woe to the guy, though, who has two jobs: attend the Port-a-Potties and yell at the people who either can’t or don’t read or simply ignore the signs that say: STAY OUT OF THE FLOWER FIELDS.

Over, and over, and over again….

THE WORKERS:

The antique steam engines are wood fueled, and were not attended when I visited yesterday. But the name Woodburn raised a memory: when my kids had bad reactions to a measles vaccination, thus skipping the second dose, our pediatrician warned us not to go to Woodburn, a small rural community close to the farms. He was worried that so many of the migrant farm workers who come to Oregon had not had the chance to inoculate their children and that measles ran rampant in the rural parts, undocumented by the state because of the status of the workers.

This was some 30 years ago.The fieldworkers are still often working under precarious conditions. I don’t know about Oregon, but last week a large number of migrant workers on the tulip farms in Skaggit County, WA, which have their annual festival coming up, went on strike. Most media headlined with “want higher or more equitable wages,” but a core issue was health conditions. The workers have been hard hit during the pandemic, not given safety equipment like masks, enough bathrooms, and are exposed to harmful pesticides. To prevent allergies and burns from acidic spray off the tulips and daffodils, gloves must be medical grade to offer protection, and the workers themselves are forced to pay at least $30 for one box of gloves.

The strike was suspended on Thursday so the union, Familias Unidas por la Justicia (FUJ), and Washington Bulb Company could come to an agreement and avoid disrupting the annual Tulip Festival. (The bulb company’s parent is RoozenGaarde, is the largest grower of tulips, daffodils, and irises in the world.) Stay tuned. Why am I not optimistic???

In the meantime, there’s plenty of time to visit the tulips in Oregon. So much still about to go into bloom.

And let’s not forget the fates of tulip speculators….. your music for today.