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Category: flowers

Anything but Routine

Anything but Routine

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Every spring I plant impatiens in the front garden and tomatoes and basil in pots on the deck. That’s what I did yesterday.  The begonias will wait till the weekend. These annuals join the perennials, the day lilies and climbing rose and (right now) the slender irises and steadfast peony.

This is not a wide array of plants, but experience has proven what will grow in our shady yard — and what will not (forget a vegetable garden).

Is this what makes for routine? All the countless failed experiments — geraniums, petunias, speedwell, columbine?  The list of plants that won’t grow in this shady, clay soil is much longer than the list of those that will. But all it takes is a few. And the knowledge of what those few are makes gardens grow a little faster, bloom a little brighter.

(The garden of my dreams, not my reality! It’s anything but routine.)

The Aftermath

The Aftermath

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Two days of weather and it’s raining not just drops but petals.

Blossoms fall from the trees, cling to sidewalks, cars — and park benches, too.

A house I passed yesterday in the twilight caught my eye, its front lawn covered with vivid pink petals, from a Kwanzan cherry, I think. If I’d had time I would have stopped and snapped a picture.

Instead I remember this: an ordinary house, a tree branching green, a yard with pink snow.

Stem, Bud, Leaf

Stem, Bud, Leaf

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I write about this hedge every year. It’s a welcome subject today, when there are so many things I’d rather not write about. So many sad and unnatural things.

The hedge, on the other hand, spends its days just being a hedge. It was trimmed earlier in the season, so it has the sad openness of a little boy after his first haircut, curls heaped around the chair.

But the haircut has not deterred the hedge from performing its hedgely duty — the steady transformation from brown stem to pink bud to green leaf.

Some years it takes weeks for this to happen, and I hold my breath. But this year it took only a few days. An ordinary miracle.

White Violets

White Violets

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An oxymoron, I guess. A rarity, for sure.

Find a field of violets, and the ratio of white to purple will be roughly the same as this one.

But finding a field of violets isn’t easy. Too often the sweet flowers have been weeded or mulched or mowed into oblivion.

The owners of this house have the good sense to let their violets bloom free. (No, it’s not our yard — I wish our weeds were this attractive.) And they’ve been rewarded with the rare white variety. Not many of the flowers, just enough for contrast, just enough to let us know they’re still around. 

Seize the Day

Seize the Day

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Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough
And stands along the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide

Now, of my threescore years and ten
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.
A.E. Housman

I kept thinking of these words yesterday, of how beauty is bounded by time, how all things precious are. And so this seasonal ritual is not just spectacle, not just renewal, it is reminder.

The blossoms are fleeting; they, like us, will come and go. But we’re here, and they’re here.

There’s nothing left to do but seize the day.

Blossoms for the People

Blossoms for the People

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I used to wait for the perfect photograph, hold my camera steady until a split-second unobstructed view. But on today’s early morning stroll around the Tidal Basin, I didn’t mind including people in the picture. It was the people I noticed most.

The joy on their faces, not a sour look in the bunch. These are cherry blossom devotees, early risers,  up before 6 to be downtown before 7.  Joggers, bikers, picnickers, photographers — all here for one reason, to get their fill of beauty.

Here’s what they saw:

Daffodils

Daffodils

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I discovered them last year and have imagined them many times since. Not exactly Wordsworth’s daffodils, but close. They have the same careless profusion, the same grace and glee. They come to a world stripped of color; they are the opening salvo of spring.

Even knowing they were there, I was still surprised by their number and color, by the way they’ve threaded themselves through the woods.

And I wasn’t the only one. There were other walkers on the path, nodding, pointing, savoring their glory.

I almost took another picture. But I’d taken several last year. So this year’s pilgrimage was just to look, to imagine, to store them up like sunshine and good times. To keep them in mind as the poet did, for a “vacant” or “pensive mood.”

And that’s where they are now, and where they’ll stay.

Wind, Flake, Flower

Wind, Flake, Flower

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Yesterday, the soul of March. Brisk breeze, clouds dark and low, occasional sun, and every so often a flake or two of snow in the sky. 

Cold enough for winter, bright enough for spring. The snowdrops along the path hung their heads, stayed close to the ground. It was cold even for them.

In a few weeks we’ll have cherry blossoms, daffodils, red bud trees. But not yet. There is a thinness to the light, a hesitancy in the air. The great drama is still playing out.

Will winter win, or spring?

Violets, Again

Violets, Again

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Violets are part of my emotional-horticultural heritage. My mother has
always loved them and her mother, my namesake, always
loved them, too. I have very few of my grandmother’s possessions, but I
do have her violet-patterned cup and saucer set, and I treasure
it.

In a way, the violet is a strange flower to claim. Many consider it a weed. It’s mowed down as often as it’s cultivated.

But even without the family tradition, I would like this flower. Maybe it’s the color combination, the vividness of
the purple, the way it’s grounded by the green. Or maybe it’s the way it
clusters with its own, as if waiting to be gathered into a bouquet. In
the general boisterousness that is spring, the violet is shy and
unassuming; it doesn’t ask for much.

 For that reason, it’s an easy flower to love.

(Happy Birthday, Mom!)

New Normal

New Normal

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I noticed these green shoots more than a week ago. They may have peeked through in late December. The ground has been easy to peek through, after all. A few cold blustery days but warmer than usual for the most part.

Yesterday was mild and foggy, today more of the same. Meanwhile, in other parts of the state, temperatures rose into the 70s this weekend.

The heather is blooming, soon the witch hazel will, too. And from the looks of it, the daffodils will be early this year.

It’s not so much early spring as lack of winter. It’s the new normal.