The Tulip Farm – Part 1: Rows of Colour

"Five o'clock," said Joris. "The light is best."

"That is the middle of the night."

"It is dawn. Come."

Esther, thirty-two, a botanical illustrator from Edinburgh, pulled on her coat and followed him out of the farmhouse into the pale spring dark. A thin mist lay over the fields. Then the sun lifted, and the world turned to colour: stripe after stripe of red, yellow, pink and white tulips running away to the horizon in perfect, trembling lines.

She gasped. Joris, thirty-five, the grower's son, grinned. He had big hands, a weather-beaten face and a faded cap, and he rode the old black bicycle with one foot always lifted, as if the whole country were a very gentle slope.

"Every year, the same," he said. "Every year, I forget."

"It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."

"I think so also."

For three weeks Esther set up her easel at the edge of the fields. She painted the dawn stripes and the dusk gold, the rain on the petals, the wind rippling through the rows. Joris worked nearby, picking, bundling, carrying crates, and every so often brought her coffee in a chipped enamel mug.

"You never look at your painting," she said, once.

"I look at it every day. It is the only one I like."

"Joris."

"Yes?"

"You're blushing."

"It is the sun." He rubbed his neck. "Esther. I would like to say something. I would like to kiss you, if you would like that."

Continue the story: Part 2 – Cut Flowers.

Continue the story: Part 2 – Cut Flowers.