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Category: flowers

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.

Garden in Autumn

Garden in Autumn

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Yesterday I took a midday walk in balmy D.C. The trees were turning enough to remind me it’s fall and not late summer. The air was that way, too. Warmth without weight, which meant I kept taking off my sweater and putting it back on again.

In the botanical gardens a group of schoolchildren played on the lawn. They were clad in red t-shirts, and were running back and forth, panting and laughing, following the instructions of their teacher. “O.K. This time I want you to find a partner and run together.”

A few steps away was the rose garden. I sniffed around for the most aromatic flowers and found a couple that made me inhale long and deep.

Apart from the roses’ pinks and yellows, the rest of the autumn garden palette was a muted one: lavender asters, russet leaves and the fuzzy fronds of tall grasses.  It was a faded look, mellow and complete.

Drowned Roses

Drowned Roses

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The living is easy for first-bloom roses. Born in late May, days
past the last frost-possible day, they inherit late evenings, balmy air and no Japanese beetles. They can look forward to a long,
splendid life. (That’s in rose years of course.)

 But second-bloom roses emerge when the sun tilts lower in the sky, when the nights become
nippy, and — this year, at least — when autumn rains mat the grass and rattle limbs loose from the tall oaks.

They may not always hold their heads up like their spring brethren. But they should. Theirs is the harder lot.  Second-bloom roses are the bravest.

Weeds: What Are They Good For?

Weeds: What Are They Good For?

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Here in the rainy East, it’s a good summer to be a weed — or most any kind of plant, for that matter. But I’m thinking more about weeds this morning because I pulled so many of them over the weekend.

The soil is moist and they’re easily uprooted. Plus, there are so many of them to banish. I would no sooner finish one patch of yard then I’d spy another plot of stilt grass a few feet away. Let’s just say that no weeder will be idle this summer.

One can’t help but wonder when weeding: What is it that separates the weed from its more accepted cousin? Or, put another way: Why do we cultivate one set of plants and get rid of another?

Beauty has a lot to do with it, of course, and utility.  And then there’s basic economics: We value less what we have in abundance. But isn’t there some arbitrariness to it all? After all, a weed can also be a flower.

Rows of Sharon

Rows of Sharon

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The Rose of Sharon is blooming now beside the driveway. The dark green plant is covered with plump, white, rose-like blooms. But it’s not my Rose of Sharon I want to write about — but a row of these plants that line a yard a block away from here.

I know the history of these small trees, know why they bloom where they do. The corner house is the home of “the faithful jogger.” Don’t know his real name, only that my children used to call him that years ago because every day, at least once a day and regardless of weather, he could be seen running up and down Folkstone Drive. He never seemed very happy, had a plodding gait — I always imagined he had taken up the practice for his health. All of which is beside the point except to illustrate the man’s persistence. He doesn’t give up easily.

And he didn’t give up when three years in a row bad wind or ice storms took down his split rail fence. Twice he built it up again. In fact, he was always one of the first people out clearing debris. Then a few days later, more fencing would appear.

This last time was different. Instead of planks he planted rows of spindly Rose of Sharon trees, the smallest, slightest stock, barely more than sticks in the ground. There were many of them, though, and I could see his plan — to create a green and living border, to make a fence that would bend but not break.

It’s been years now since those trees went into the ground, and years since he last jogged down our suburban lane. But those once-spindly trees are filling out into a proper, flowery border. They have matured to beauty and to fullness. And when I saw them the other day, I saw not just what they are but what they were, what they have become.

This is what happens when you walk a place; when you know not just its stories but its back stories as well.

Looking Closer

Looking Closer

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Yesterday I met a wee Scotswoman who has lived in the western United States for more than 40 years but still has a lovely brogue’ish lilt to her speech. She lost her husband almost a year ago and since then, she said, has found great comfort in walking. “It’s when I think,” she said.

She lives in Spokane and strolls through neighborhoods, but putting her comment together with the spectacular mountain scenery we hiked through yesterday made me ponder what it would be like to have the Rockies at your disposal as a walking/thinking landscape.

At first it would distract. Hard to ponder anything in the face of such beauty. Hard to do much of anything but marvel. But in time, I suppose, even great beauty becomes ordinary. And then one’s eye would wander from the grand vistas to the small beauties: a swath of fog wrapped around a hillside in the morning chill or a stand of lupine beside a weathered tree stump. In time, these would be the prompts of productive ambling; these little things, small and lovely.

Daisies!

Daisies!

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The daisy has all the simplicity of summer, and all the cheerfulness, too.

Daisies lined the roadsides of my drive to Kentucky last weekend. They clustered and nodded. They brightened and bobbed.

They softened the shaggy limestone cliffs of that part of the world, proof of the soil’s richness, a mantle for the ground, a bright penny for its thoughts.