A Walker in the Suburbs

A friend at work is retiring and yesterday she gave me her plants, a small begonia and a Christmas cactus. These join my anemic spider plants and seen-better-days African violet on a table (another bequeath) in front of the alley-view window.

My office now has cleaner air and slightly softer outlines. It has a bit of the jungle about it. It will be nice next week to be greeted not just by a spot of green but by a veritable wall of it. There’s something about bringing the outside in that does a heart good.

And speaking of that, I am in search of a cyclamen for the holidays. If it is even half as profuse and lovely as last year’s, we will be in good shape.

I can’t walk far these days without seeing one of late summer’s most luscious treats. It is Clematis paniculata, sweet autumn clematis.

Paniculata — what a wonderful word! I say it silently to myself when I’m walking and I swear it speeds me up. It has multisyllabic bounciness. It reminds me, in fact, of another multisyllabic word, Lolita, and of the opening lines of Nabokov’s novel by that name: “Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.”

Only with “paniculata” that would be five steps down the palate — Pa. Nic. U. La. Ta.”

Paniculata is a spray of white in a world of tired green. It is a bridal veil, a fountain, a bounty; climbing over fence rows and crowning mailboxes. We had one for many years and then it mysteriously disappeared. A victim of disease or an errant mower? We’ll never know.

Every year I vow to plant another. But every year I forget. Clematis paniculata. Ghost flowers.

Photo: White Flower Farm

On a walk down the West Ox path today, one stretch was lined with wild chickory, the blue flowers nodding over the path, almost crowding me out. I felt like I was strolling along a flower-strewn walk in an English country garden. The wild plants will do that to you, will mimic, with their colors and arrangement, the artlessness of the planned landscape.

But then again, some designed landscapes, Central Park, for example, are a controlled version of nature with stream, foliage and vista. Makes me think we need a little of both — wild and free; prim and controlled — in our gardens and in our lives.

I’ve never considered myself a color expert, a landscape designer or, heaven forbid, an interior decorator. But I know what I like about color. It’s the contrast, the way one end of the wheel brings out the other.

It’s the profusion of complementary shades in the summer garden. Our neighbor’s, for instance (not pictured here; this is ours), with tall zinnias of yellow, orange and pink all mixed in with the sturdy dusky rose coneflowers.

As for us, we’ve had orange day lilies, yellow black-eyed susans and pink coneflowers all together, and, if you look at them from the right angle, you can see a purple hydrangea in the foreground, too. These bright mingling hues are enough for now. They are meant to go together; they are pleasant on the eyes.

Yesterday I went to see the cherry blossoms at the tidal basin. It was a fresh, just-drenched morning with a bar rainbow (looking like a colorful UPC code) in the sky above National Airport. There were low clouds and intermittent rain.

The blossoms were past peak, so I had them (almost) to myself. Pink petals piled on the pavement, clung to tree bark, dotted park benches. It was a pointillistic paradise. The beauty was still there; it was just broken and scattered.

Now that my blog is in its second year I sometimes worry that I will repeat myself, write the same post on the same day. After all, many of my posts are about the seasons and the cyclical nature of life. Or, maybe I only have 350 thoughts, give or take one or two, and it’s inevitable that I recycle them.

I say this as a preface to writing about violets, because I wrote about them last year. But this year I want to single out their punctuality, how I can always count on seeing them as soon as April arrives. I saw the first violets of the season on Saturday, when I lifted up the screen that had been protecting young lettuce and saw instead the first violet. Such a sweet, unassuming flower — but nevertheless a product of complex forces and drives. How else to explain the punctuality?

The timing of blossoms is big business around here; predicting the cherry trees’ peak bloom is both an art and a science. But what strikes me when I look at the violet is that its timing and placement is always perfect. Less heralded, but always on time.

Lately all we’ve been harvesting are twigs and branches from our brittle aging trees. The winds have blown and the sticks have fallen. But yesterday I noticed in the half-light of morning a tiny yellow flower, an anemone ( I think). I don’t recall planting it but I do remember seeing flowers like it in Sweden. Could a seed have slipped in on our shoes somehow? Are we planting in our sleep? I decide to take it for what it is: a mystery of spring.