Shelling begins before dawn on Sanibel Island, if one is serious about it. Banded tulips have long been my favorite. I cannot tell you why, except that perhaps my first truly beautiful specimen was a banded tulip twenty-six years ago. From the moment I saw it edging out from a shell bank, I was smitten. There was a Spring, in the early years of my visits to the island, when the shoreline was littered with paper figs. I’d never paid them much attention until early one morning that Spring. I walked down from the house to the beach, and there, I saw them. Lighting up the shoreline like a thousand tiny genie lanterns. Luminous from within. With the appearance of fragility, paper thin, invoking wonder.