Many of us who love to grow tulips in our gardens have visiting deer who love to eat them. It seems to be such a violent death for a bud or flower.

The poet E. J.Scovell, when she wrote the following poem in 1991, must not have had deer in her garden because she describes a more gradual demise. Here are some excerpts of her poem:

I would, if I could, choose

Age, and die outwards as a tulip does;

Not as this iris drawing in, in-coiling

Its complex strange taut inflorescence, willing

Itself a bud again-though all achieved is

No more than a clenched sadness,

The tears of gum not flowing.

I would choose the tulip's reckless way of going;

Whose petals answer light, altering by fractions

From closed to wide, from one through many perfections,

Till wrecked, flamboyant, strayed beyond recall,

Like flakes of fire they piecemeal fall.

Most of us prefer tulips in a vase when they are closed or just partly open, rather than splayed outwards, wide open, just before the petals fall. Though perhaps, opening wide, is their last defiant gesture of farewell.