When to cut tulips from the garden

There's a just-right point to cut tulips in the garden, in order to get maximum enjoyment indoors. I find that if I wait too long, my tulips will be spent within a couple of days of bringing indoors.

These tulips, right here, are right where I like to cut them. The buds are tightly closed, having never opened. If I cut them at this point, bring them in and pop into a vase of water, overnight, they become "perfect" barely-bloomed tulips, like the below photo.

With recutting the stems and changing the water, every day to every other day, they will be beautiful for an entire week. And yes, with tulips, I do cut the leaves with the stems, and submerge in the water, leaves and stems, all. It gives the bunch a fuller look, I think. And as tulips will only last, once cut, for about a week, anyway, I don't feel I'm shortening their "life" in the water any.

With each water change, I also give the tulips a pinch of floral preservative. If you don't have any floral preservative, there's a recipe for homemade preservative/food in this post.

Happy April, everyone! I hope you have tulips in your area now, or very soon!

Look what was in the free pile at Kohl's!

Okay, just a joke. No real "free" pile outside the doors at Kohl's. but you know how many garage sales have free piles? I was joking with my daughters about the free pile at Kohl's last week.

I had a $10 coupon in my stack of mail waiting for me when I returned from my trip. Luckily for me, it hadn't expired.

So off I went to Kohl's, coupon in hand. And going into the store I looked down and spied 2 pennies on the floor. Of course, I stooped to pick those 2 cents up. You never know when you're going to need 2 more cents, right?!

I wandered the home section of the store, looking for good deals. There are these knobs/hooks that I like. I picked up one of them a few months ago, on sale and with a $10 off coupon. But I knew I wanted another to make a pair of hooks on the wall. And this must be lucky day, as they were on sale, again!

I picked up one, price-checked it on the price checker machine, and found I needed to spend about another dollar to use the full $10 off coupon. In checking all of the clearance items, I found a bath bomb for 60 cents. This will make a great gift. Then I found a couple of gift bags, one for Mother's day and another for Christmas. Double great!

So i took my purchases to the cash register. After the gal rang them up, the total came to . . . you guessed it! 2 cents! I reached into my pocket and pulled out those 2 pennies. In and out the door with no money spent. The Kohl's free pile.