Val St. Lambert Crystal Vase with Tulips & Memories

Special Gift

A friend gifted us with a beautiful arrangement of blooming tulips when she and her husband recently came to have dinner at our home. She has brought the same flowers in the past and knows that tulips are among my husband's favorite flowers.

The memories of this latest gift will linger longer than most because, in addition to photos I took of them, the tulips were in a vase of Val St. Lambert crystal.

The crystal vase looked beautiful. I placed it on the buffet in the dining room. It was a lovely addition to the ambiance for our delightful evening of food, laughter, and great company.

Of course, I had to fill the vase daily as cut tulips are thirsty water drinkers. As the tulips continued to open and droop, such as in their fashion, they became even prettier as the days passed.

The photos pictured here are those very same same tulips.

Val Saint Lambert

Finally the day had come to put the tulips onto our compost pile and wash the vase. It was then that I discovered the additional gift of that evening...the fact of the vase being an expensive crystal Val Saint Lambert creation. Thank you Pat!

Val Saint Lambert is a well known crystal manufacturer which originated in 1826 in Belgium and which has been creating beautiful crystal pieces ever since that time. It got its name of Val Saint Lambert due to the fact of it first being created in an abandoned abbey of that same name.

The abbey gets its name after St. Lambert, a bishop in the City of Maastricht in the Netherlands, who died in 705. Maastricht is only a few miles from the border of Belgium. That's a brief history lesson for you!

This post commemorates the most thoughtful of beautiful gifts and will offer lasting views of the tulips for much longer than their brief life from bulb to plant to glorious bloom would otherwise entail because of these photos taken in the days following that most generous of gifts.

Memories

For one period of our lives, my husband and I attended many fundraising balls and gala occasions in Houston.

I could not attend one of those festive events on several occasions, and we had several good friends who were "approved dates" for my husband. We have joked about the "approved date" list for years. Several of our friends happily volunteered to be on that roster.

Once, our dear friend Pat, who was widowed, accompanied my husband to a Symphony Ball. The flowers adorning all the elaborately decorated tables that particular year were tulips. That was when she first learned of my husband's fondness for that flower. She never forgot and has subsequently gifted us with those flowers numerous times.

History

The youthful lady pictured above was my paternal grandmother as a young girl. It was her confirmation picture.

When I first remembered her, she lived in a home on a lake in Okauchee, Wisconsin. Her husband had built that home for her, plus a string of cottages that became rental properties.

My grandparents had terraced the hillside going down to the lake with rocks and had many perennial plants sowed into the hillside ground and around the house. Apparently, in its day, it was quite the showplace as viewed from the lake.

Tulips and other bulb plants like iris were among the mixture of plants.

Tulips in northern climates like Wisconsin bloom in the Spring of the year. Sometimes, their foliage peeks through lingering snow on the ground, and they are often some of the first bright colors forecasting the end of a frigid winter and warmer days ahead. Thus, they are welcomed for their unique beauty and as a harbinger of other flowering plants that eventually brighten the landscape.

My mother tells me that her parents also always grew tulips at their home in Milwaukee. She often proudly took the first big bouquet of tulips to her school teacher in the Spring of the year from cuttings in her parent's yard.

Children often took bouquets to their teachers back then, and they would adorn the teacher's desk at the front of the classroom. It cheered up the classroom, and, of course, the teacher would profusely thank the child who brought the bouquet to her (most teachers back then were female), making the child feel good.

Wisconsin to Texas and Back

I lived in Wisconsin until turning 13 before my family moved to Texas.

After getting married, my husband received a job promotion. It necessitated moving from Houston to central Wisconsin. We lived there for about four years before getting transferred back to Houston, Texas.

He was in the paper distribution business, and Wisconsin happened to house the home office for the company. He returned to Houston to run the local division of the paper company after being on the corporate marketing team.

What does this have to do with tulips? My grandmother shared some tulip bulbs with us, and we planted about 75 to 100. They became a bright red spot of color in our backyard each Spring.

Tulips are bulbous plants that rapidly spread in the ground. They must be occasionally thinned, or the blooms get smaller as the bulbs become crowded. Before leaving Wisconsin, we had shared hundreds of these tulip bulbs from my grandmother with neighbors and friends.

By now, there should be thousands of tulips in the Wisconsin Rapids area of the country that stemmed from my grandmother's home on Okauchee Lake.

Unfortunately, where we now live in Texas, tulip bulbs do not naturalize and spread with the resulting new blooms each year without much effort. One would have to dig them up after they bloom, store them, and refrigerate them for several months before planting each year to give them that dormant period they require.

For us, it is simply easier to purchase blooming pots of tulips or bouquets each year and enjoy the brief but brilliant splash of their colorful beauty.

Tulip Festival

When my husband lived in Iowa as a youth, he and his family often visited Pella each spring to see the annual Tulip Festival. Pella, Iowa, is a charming town that also features some windmills.

Holland Tulips

Most people associate the country of Holland with tulips, and for good reason. Millions of tulips are raised commercially in Holland and exported all around the globe. It must be quite a sight to be visiting there when the fields are ablaze with blooming tulips of various sizes, shapes, and hues.

Tulips originated in Asia before spreading to other countries in Europe and beyond. They come in many different species and sizes as well as colors.
Tulips are found almost year-round as the bulbs grow by simulating the natural growing environment, which includes periods of cold and dormancy plus the correct fertile soil conditions, moisture, and light.

I hope you liked this tribute to our friend Pat, who gave us these gorgeous tulips in a Val St. Lambert crystal vase pictured in this post and which also generated some memories of the near and distant past.