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Category: flowers

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.

Roses in December

Roses in December

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It was almost 70 degrees yesterday as I made my way along New Jersey Avenue to the Capitol. A small wind was whiffling the pansies, stirring the purples and yellows and the dark green leaves.  I moseyed down a section of tree-lined street that reminds me of Paris, with the U.S. Capitol winking through what’s left of the leaves.

The broad plaza of the East Front entrance was filled with shirt-sleeved tourists snapping photos, but noon light drained color from the scene. I turned left down East Capitol, passing the Library and the Folger and a bookstore I always intend to visit but never do. Roses were still blooming, tumbling along fence posts and garden gates. In the air, the smell of new-mown grass.

Everyone was out in the warm weather — dog-walkers and nannies pushing prams and office workers on a lunchtime jog.  There’s a park where I usually turn around, and today I strode right through the middle of it. I never knew what it was called until I checked a map after my stroll. It’s Lincoln Park — and not at all like its Chicago counterpart — but now I’ll never forget the name.

Late Rose

Late Rose

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Frost has nipped the begonias, colored the maples, brought a dignified end to the tomato and basil plants. But it has not yet conquered the knockout roses in our front yard.

They have continued to bloom red and pink, their colors out of place with subtle autumn russets and gold, their freshness unexpected and sublime.

To see them still waving in the breeze is to believe that all will be well, that winter will pass and spring will come again.