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Category: flowers

The Orchid

The Orchid

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One advantage of sitting near a bank of office windows is enjoying the plants the light makes possible. Look at this beauty, which has been blooming almost a month, it seems. I watched each papery flower emerge along the graceful stem.

The orchid’s owner received the plant several years ago when her mother died. Each bloom is a sweet reminder of her mother’s presence.

And now, because I know the story, the plant has greater presence for me, too, each day of flowering another bid for life. I’m pulling for the plant to live forever.

Rose Before Rain

Rose Before Rain

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The rain moves in soon, up to an inch an hour according to some forecasts. I’m glad I snapped shots of the roses earlier today..

These are delicate flowers, especially when fully open. I shudder to think what they’ll look like this time tomorrow.

For now, though, all is still and calm. The sky has eked out a few drops, but the big deluge is still west of here. Time now to take what we have — late rose and rose hips, yard full of weeds, garden past its prime — and savor it. Before the rain falls.

Ripening

Ripening

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Vines have twined, leaves have greened, flowers have bloomed — but they are only the prelude, the tuning orchestra, the tapped microphone. They are the dress rehearsal for the big show.

It’s a play being enacted in countless gardens and across endless sunny meadows. It’s the ripening of berries, the slow evolution of flower to fruit.
Ripening tests our patience, but nature will not be hurried. I’ve had my eye on these blackberries for weeks — from their waxy white infancy to their lush red adolescence — waiting for them to plump up and ripen into the shiny purplish black that means they’re ready to eat. 
I see this berry patch often on my walks; it’s hiding in plain sight, tucked between two evergreens up against a guardrail. I’ve tried to take each stage as it comes, to enjoy the ripening process. But I’m bedeviled by two questions: When can I eat the little guys? And will the birds get them first? 
Flowery Bower

Flowery Bower

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Early on in my almost three decades (gulp) in this house, I tried to plant an English cottage garden. I’d seen the photos in catalogs and they struck my fancy. I liked the informality, the abundance, the palette.

So with the ardor of a novice gardener I ordered peonies, daisies, astilbe and climbing roses. I hacked my way into the clay soil, added lime and peat moss and gave those plant babies a chance. I watered and mulched and fussed.

The peony produced one flower (with the requisite ants) but never thrived. The astilbes barely lasted a summer. I learned quickly that I needed coneflowers rather than daisies.

But the climbing roses were a different matter entirely. The climbing roses “took.”

So now I have a flowery bower, courtesy of an English cottage rose.

Dining with Roses

Dining with Roses

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There could be worse company, I think to myself as I stand at the deck railing with leftover chicken and salad. The roses are budding and blooming. They are walling off the deck from the rest of the world, forming a flowery screen. And I’m alone with a modest meal, tired of sitting from a long day and even longer commute.

The roses are an antidote. They ask nothing of me other than my gaze. And so, I oblige. I lose myself in their mesmerizing centers, their pink whorls slightly darker than the outside petals. But the overall picture one of pastel loveliness.

Pastels and spring, after all, go together. The color of new life, of shades that have not yet been tested. Hues still wet behind the ears.

Today the temperature will soar and the roses will wilt. But last night, for one perfect al fresco dinner,  I had them all to myself.

Finding the Source

Finding the Source

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I’m skipping the cherry blossoms at the Tidal Basin this year, an annual ritual I haven’t missed in 10 years. This is in part because of the cold-stunted blooms this year and in part because I can’t easily walk to the show.

But cherry blossoms are everywhere. Even on my 12-minute walks around the block. And I’m not the only one who notices.

It’s not a matter of traveling to the source, but of finding the source wherever you happen to be.

The Art of Perseverance

The Art of Perseverance

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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.

Snowdrops: A Beginning?

Snowdrops: A Beginning?

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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.

What a walk it was! The birds were singing, the sun was lowering and the flowers were blooming. Great clusters of snowdrops peeping up not from the snow (which has been scarce to nonexistent this year) but from the leaves and brown grass. 
These are wintry flowers, white and delicate, but they are further harbingers of the season. They are proof that this balminess, this lovely light, is not just a preview but maybe, just maybe, a beginning.

Pulling for Pansies

Pulling for Pansies

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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.

Sprinter

Sprinter

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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.