Description
April in the Luxembourg Gardens, and the tulip beds have burst into color overnight. Red, yellow, a pink so soft it is almost white. An elderly man walks there every morning at nine with a paper bag of crumbs for the sparrows, and every spring, on the day the tulips open, he picks one discreetly when the gardener is not looking and carries it home to his wife. Fifty-one years, and he has never missed the day. She pretends to scold him. She keeps every one, pressed between the pages of her cookbook.
This petite heart holds that kind of springtime devotion. Slim and small enough to slip into a handbag, it is a sweet gift for Mother’s Day, a birthday in spring, or a Valentine’s surprise for someone who prefers tulips to roses. It suits a gardener who plants bulbs every autumn in hopeful anticipation, too. Set it on a windowsill, a nightstand or a vanity tray, where it can keep safe a single earring, a tiny pressed petal or a folded love note.
The details
- Heart shape decorated with spring tulips
- Rochard is the maker
- Its little lid turns on a brass hinge
- Petite at approximately 1.75 x .75 x 2 inches
- Each tulip petal brushed on by hand, Limoges porcelain made in France
Give it on the first day of spring with a bunch of real tulips; one bouquet will fade, the other never will.
