I did not expect to be showcasing tulips in a vase on the last Monday of March, but when these appeared in the shrub border this week they surprised me just as much as all the surprises I featured yesterday. Having long since given up planting tulips in the borders in the hope they will return the following year, I couldn't tell you what these ones are, although I think they will date from my last mass tulip planting in the autumn of 2016, when I planted over 100 tulip bulbs in the shrub border, never to be seen again after their first year of flowering - until now that is! A contemporary post suggests they might possibly be T 'Sake', but who knows and, after six years, who cares?!

There are actually three tulip stems in the tall and slim green vase (possibly Caithness Glass), but the third was lagging behind its taller chums when roped into service for today's vase, which also contains purloined forsythia from our neighbour's verge. In the interest of even greater spring colour, rather than a sudden desire to increase the presence of yellow in the garden, I do now have a compact forsythia of my own, F 'Mikador', albeit not likely to flower this year. Additional springiness is supplied by the mini slinky.

Spring is beginning to slink into many northern hemisphere bloggers' gardens now, bringing a wider variety of material for Monday vases, and if you would like to share a vase of your own please leave the usual links to and from this post.