These crocus hold their heads above the snow. Don’t forget to breathe, they tell each other. Spring will soon be here.
These lavender flowers tell me all I need to know about staying the course. And their spiky green leaves are the exclamation points to this crazy season.
It’s still Sprinter, the new hybrid we’re pioneering this year. One day winter, one day spring.
The crocus have the right idea, I think. They turn perseverance into art.
Last evening on the way home from work I realized that I had the time and the daylight to take a walk on a Reston trail. It’s the path that I’ll call CCC (Cross County Connector; see yesterday’s post!) because the last part of it merges with my beloved Cross County Trail.
Every fall landscapers engage in the delightfully doomed act of planting pansies. False hope, I say to myself. These flowers will never make it.
And, for the last few years, I’ve been right. Cold temps and frigid winds nipped the plants, and come spring, there was nothing left but a few withered stems.
But this year the pansies are thriving. Look at these babies, resplendent in their midwinter glory.
I used to think I didn’t “deserve” spring if I hadn’t suffered through winter. Blame it on Catholicism — or on living in Chicago for a few years.
This year I consider any escape from winter a gift from the gods. I’m pulling for pansies.
Not the kind that pushes off from a block and streaks down a track. The kind of sprinter I have in mind is a season strung between spring and winter, a new hybrid that moves from balmy to brisk in a matter of hours.
Yesterday on my way to work I saw yellow petals on the sidewalk. I imagined a van unloading plants for a catered event, or a landscaping truck with pale forsythias ready for bedding. Surely these petals had no local source. It was February 8, after all, and I work in a concrete jungle!
But something — hopefulness? — made me look up. And there, on top of a Crystal City wall (Crystal City is very good at walls) was a bright yellow jasmine vine spilling over the stone.
Today, a cold, raw wind is blowing, and it’s spitting snow. The jasmine vine is shivering. But no need to worry — by Sunday it will be 70 again. After all, it’s sprinter.
The groundhog has spoken: We’ll have six more weeks of winter. Which is why I’m doing a lot of shushing these days.
I walk out the front door and hear the birds, their songs sounding suspiciously springlike. I feel the warmth of the sun even as I shiver in my down coat, hat and gloves. I check around the big tree. Good! No signs of life.
Shhhh! I say to the still-dormant earth. Sleep some more, I whisper to the tender shoots-to-be. I feel about them as I did my children as babies, when I would tip-toe to the door to find them still napping.
Sleep tight, daffodil shoots and dogwood buds. The world is not ready for you — and you are not ready for the world.
On my walk this morning I noticed, as I often do, the flagpole on the corner. There are several flagpoles on our street, but this is the most prominent, the most well lit.
What I noticed today is not just that the flag is once again at half mast. It’s been half mast most of the summer. But it’s that the sunflowers planted around the pole are now almost as tall as the flag.
I’m not sure what this says about patriotism, the world’s madness and the healing power of nature. But I am sure that the flowers will grow taller, perhaps overtaking the flag. And I’m sure that they will turn their faces toward the sun, will seek the light.
And those aren’t such bad lessons for the rest of us.
(Photo: Wikipedia)
Walks these last few weeks have taken me past banks of honeysuckle and riots of knockout roses. Along the roadside are stands of chickory with these little pink flowers that I pull up when I find in the garden but which look fetching in combination.
Beside the footpaths are Queen Anne’s Lace, daisies, buttercups, pink wild beans and swamp milkweeds (had to look up those latter two). Everywhere I look, a riot of blossom and green.
Nature’s combinations are infinitely more stunning and artless that anything a florist shop could produce. It is the original beauty, the beauty of nature, which lies not just in profusion but in variety, and in a variety of profusion.
It lies in the palette of colors — the yellows, violets, pinks and mauves. It lies in breadth of textures, from smooth to fuzzy. It lies in alternating heights and shapes and sizes.
It is all the little things that add up to the whole. Each detail essential to the main.
When it comes to life lessons, climbing roses have a few. Their growth pattern is out and up. They thrive on training. They are tender and delicate, but can take care of themselves. (Don’t believe me? Just try getting a few of their thorns embedded in your thumb!)
They wait until spring is well underway before venturing out. And when they arrive, it’s in splendid style.
I’m admiring them today, in full flower. I worry, of course, that the weekend heat and Monday’s rain will do them in, shorten their already short lifespan. But even in that, they are illustrative.
Enjoy us now, they tell me. Don’t worry about tomorrow.
See what I mean?
(The New Dawn climbing rose in all its glory.)
An early walk through a perfect morning: just enough chill to make my skin prickle. Birds calling from the deep woods. Almost no cars.
With the rain gone the air is perfumed with honeysuckle and spirea. Fences groan with flowered bushes. Banisters and deck rails double as plant props.
The hanging plant I bought is still alive! The red roses are blooming!
It’s finally May!
I spent some quality time with the climbing rose on Saturday. Well, it wasn’t quality time at first, but after a while we came to know each other better.
I was trying to train it, you see, to make its long sinewy branches go up rather than down, left rather than right. I was trying to create a rosy bower using the pergola that Tom and Appolinaire built a couple weeks ago.
At first I just stood there, stumped by the enormous tangle. The rose needs to grow up and out, but without something to anchor it, the poor thing had been an unruly mess. It didn’t like being pushed too hard, though. Quick movements guaranteed puncture wounds.
But in time I got into the zen of the task, moving slowly to avoid snags, taking off the gloves (which were just getting caught up on the thorns) and following each ascender to its descender — puzzling out the plant’s internal order before fastening branches to wood with twisty green wire.
It’s still a work in progress, this splendid, gangly plant — but at least it’s in training.
