Tulip Time in Holland, Michigan A bus trip from the U.P., May 13-16, 1999 by Gertrude Hakala of Marquette

Hello, and welcome to my page! My name is Gertrude Hakala. I cooked in the Marquette school kitchens for thirty-one years, and I have had my hands in the dirt of one garden or another since I was old enough to pull a weed. My grandson Mitchell, who goes to Northern, set up this page for me and showed me how to put the pictures in, so if anything is crooked, it's my fault and not his.

Every spring for as long as I can remember, I have said that someday I would go see the tulips in Holland. This May our church's seniors group finally chartered a bus, forty-two of us, and I said, Gertrude, you are sixty-nine years old, if not now, when? So I went. Here is the whole trip, and some tulip advice for anybody gardening up here where the snow stays until May.

Thursday: The Long Ride Down

The bus left the church parking lot at seven sharp, with forty-two of us, two coolers, a great many sweaters and one pan of my pulla, the Finnish cardamom bread, which was gone before Munising. My seatmate was my good friend Shirley Carleton, and Florence Normandin rode up front on account of her knee. Across the Mackinac Bridge (I always hold my breath, I can't help it), down through the Lower Peninsula, lunch at a family restaurant, and on into Holland by suppertime. We played cribbage on a suitcase across the aisle. Somebody started "How Great Thou Art" somewhere south of the bridge, and the whole bus joined in, even the driver. That alone was worth the trip.

Friday: The Tulip Lanes and the Windmill

One of the tulip lanes. They go on like this for blocks and blocks.

Oh, my. They plant tulips along the curbs of the streets in Holland, in long beds between the sidewalk and the street, block after block after block, and in the middle of May they are all in bloom at once. Red and yellow, red and white, pink, purple, orange. The guide on the bus said millions, and I believe her. The old houses on those streets have big porches, and the people sit out on them and wave at the tourists. I waved back at every one.

The windmill on Windmill Island, with tulips in front.

In the afternoon we went to Windmill Island to see De Zwaan, a real Dutch windmill that was taken apart in the Netherlands and brought over and put back together here in the 1960s. It still grinds flour, and I bought a bag of it for my bread. The tulip beds in front of it were the most beautiful garden I have ever stood in, and I have stood in a few. My feet started to complain on Friday. I told them to hush.

Saturday: The Dancers, the Parade and the Bulb Farm

The Dutch dancers, in their wooden shoes, downtown.

Saturday morning the Dutch dancers danced right in the street downtown. They are high school young people, a great many of them, the girls in long skirts and aprons and those white lace caps with the wings turned up, the boys in baggy black trousers, and every one of them in wooden shoes. You can hear them coming. Clack, clack, clack. I don't know how they keep from turning an ankle. Then the big parade in the afternoon, with marching bands one after another, and the three of us had good seats on the curb because we went early and brought our lawn chairs. Florence's idea.

The fields at the bulb farm. Like a rag rug, Shirley said.

On the way back we stopped at a bulb farm outside of town where they grow the tulips in fields, row after row of one color next to row after row of another, out to the trees. Shirley said it looked like a rag rug, and that is exactly what it looked like. They take orders there for bulbs to be shipped in the fall, at planting time, and I'm afraid I got a little carried away. See below.

Sunday: Church, and Home

We went to the Sunday service at a church in town, a little different from ours but the same hymns, and the coffee hour after had Dutch letters, which are a pastry with almond filling shaped like a letter S. I would like the recipe. If anybody in Holland is reading this, please write!

Shirley, me and Florence, ready to go home.

Then back on the bus. That's Shirley on the left in the purple jacket, me in the middle in my blue sweater holding my souvenirs, and Florence with her cane on the right. One of the men from our group took it. We got into Marquette a little after ten that night, and my son was waiting in the parking lot to drive me home. My feet still hurt. I would go again tomorrow.

What I Ordered for My Yard

One hundred bulbs, coming in September: fifty red 'Apeldoorn' and fifty mixed Darwin hybrids. The Darwins are tall and strong and come back for years, the man at the farm said, which is what you want up here. They're going along the front walk where the old peonies were, and the yellow ones by the mailbox. Come by next May and see.

Tulip Tips for the U.P.

My mother, who came from Finland, used to say a garden takes sisu, which is a Finnish word for stubbornness of the good kind. Tulips in the U.P. take a little of that. But oh, when they come up through the last of the snow in May, it's worth every bit.

Friends who have stopped by:


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Last updated September 4, 1999