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Category: flowers

Shhh!

Shhh!

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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.

Sunflowers

Sunflowers

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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)

Profusion, Variety

Profusion, Variety

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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.

New Dawn

New Dawn

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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.)

Finally May!

Finally May!

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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!

In Training

In Training

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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.

Bumper Crop

Bumper Crop

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I’ve never seen as many violets as I have this spring, and in this I can’t help but see Mom’s hand. Not that she is any position to command the growth cycles of plants. (If she is, I’ll ask her to help our lawn!) But we both loved violets, and I feel her spirit in every one of these pretty flowers.

And then there is our balky lilac bush. Lilacs were another flower Mom loved. In fact, she wanted to carry white lilacs on her wedding day but was told they were out of season so she settled for stephanotis.

Our lilac has suddenly got the hang of blooming after two decades in the ground. Last year it sprouted a tiny cluster of flowers, and this year has more than doubled its blooms. With sunlight streaming into the yard as it does now, it will be no time before the bush is hanging its head with the weight of its sweet, fragrant flowers.

Or at least that’s what I’m hoping. So it’s not exactly a bumper crop, not yet. But someday…

Time for Crocus

Time for Crocus

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Some years the crocus barely stir. Spring comes too slowly for them — or too fast.

They are not the only flowers that have their moments, their seasons. The forsythia might flourish one spring, the azalea another. Doubtless it’s a combination of air temperature, rainfall, soil warmth and wind that makes their colors just a little more vivid, their flowers more plentiful.

Or maybe it’s simply a matter of taking turns. Each year is one plant’s chance to shine. Who knows? If all of them shone at once the splendor might be too much for us, might blind us with spring beauty!

So this spring it is the crocus’s turn. They are popping up out of cool soil in places I don’t remember planting them. Slender stems, unassuming flowers, herald of all the blooming that lies ahead.

Half Hidden

Half Hidden

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This is a good year for ornamental cabbage, its creamy centers unblemished by frost spots or drought. I noticed a stand of these plants on my walk yesterday. Light pink shading to ivory, edged by sage green.

I stared hard at them as I passed, lost myself momentarily in their spiky beauty so that I could re-create them on the page this morning. A type of stillness in their leafy flower. “A violet by a mossy stone, half hidden from the eye,” in Wordsworth’s style.

Later I would stroll past the Capitol and the Supreme Court, philosophies etched in stone, all the grandeur of official Washington.

But what stayed in mind were the cabbage plants, their quiet beauty, their brave salute to winter.

Springtime Color

Springtime Color

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I see it from the back of the yard, a bright spot of color in the autumn garden. In a land of browns and russets this pinkish rosey purple stands out.

It’s just a mum that I transplanted in the summer, a potted plant left to root in the hodgepodge end of the flower bed. Truth be told I had forgotten about it. But now it’s reminding me of all the springtime colors that await us.

Only four more months till Easter.