Category Archives: Flowers

One of my favorite plants may be in outside bloom in some parts of the world. The winter rose, usually referred to as the Lenten rose or Christmas rose in these posts, has been seen blooming in Boston in milder Decembers. I’m not sure this has been one of those Decembers, as I have’t seen it on recent city explorations, and the blooms seen here are from a display in Trader Joe’s. It matters not – beauty is beauty, whether natural or forced – each has its charms. 

Right now, the bulk of our flowers will be found in forced form, unnaturally in bloom at this mostly inhospitable time of the year. In some respects they are more precious and important now than when they come into bloom outside when spring first arrives. That’s what I mean by beauty is beauty.

A simple bouquet of spray roses – pink, as Andy prefers his flowers – is a bright spot as we approach the longest night of the year. These photos were taken in the early morning light – later I’ll post their dramatically different hue at night.

I’ve found that one way to ensure that roses open up is to cut them immediately before plopping them into water so there is no time for the stem to seal up and hinder water flow later – as well as using the hottest water that comes out of the faucet (and no hotter, so you don’t need to boil anything on the stove). 

Andy used to grow magnificent roses at his former house, where he had sun and good circulation and the summers were kinder than they’ve been of late. As we get older, there is less interest in sustaining such high-maintenance performers for a few flowers, though from time to time we try out a rose just to see if the climate has improved. Thus far it’s only gotten worse, with the blackspot and humidity and aphid infestations. 

For now, these bouquet will have to do – and the bonus is that they’re available year-round whenever we need a little lift of spirits, even in the month of Christmas. 

Many years and many offices ago, a co-worker gave me a Christmas cactus. It was a small thing in a three-inch pot, wrapped in gaudy ribbon and sprinkled with glitter. Once I got it home, I promptly threw out the wrapping and washed off the glitter, then left it in our front window, which gets the most sun. There it sat for many years, and I’d always more or less forget about it (the best sort of treatment for a Christmas cactus actually) until it caught my eye with this grand electrifying color. Left in a relatively unused room, as our living room tends to be at night, it was able to follow the natural cycle of day sunlight, and every year around this time it would burst into bloom. 

Some years it was more floriferous than others, but there were always a few blooms guaranteed, even if the thing was bizarrely changeable. The original plant grew as I repotted it, and it remains in my care to this day. Several months ago, a couple of larger pieces broke off, and I let them dry and callous off, then managed to root them in some light soil. (These are not technically true cacti, but epiphytes, so their soil should be as light as possible – they also seem to like more humidity than a typical cactus.)

Sooner than expected, it produced these blooms – a happy gift that came a little early for Christmas, so maybe this is a Thanksgiving non-cactus after all. I’m not into debating these days, so whatever you want to consider it is fine. Something this pretty defies labels anyway – even proper ones. 

With a few hard frosts already under our autumn belt, I assumed that our outside blooms were long over. It was a happy surprise when I discovered in a hidden section of our back porch, these fuchsia and begonia flowers, still intact and still in bloom. The immediately brought me back to early summer, when the season was fresh and new, and hope seeped out of every living thing. It was the start of our beautiful coquette summer, and life was a beautiful pink gingham fantasy. 

It feels far away, but it was only a few months, and in that same span of time we’ll be returning to spring next year. In spite of several hard frosts, this fall has been remarkably kind, weather-wise. It’s stayed warm – so much so that Andy was swimming on Halloween – something that has never happened before – and the pool is still open with a possibility of one more dip today or tomorrow. We’ve already made a deep dent into fall, and it hasn’t really felt like it – may that mean a swift move through winter as well. We can slow things down again in the spring. 

At the time that I write this, it is past the nine o’clock evening hour. A hard frost has been forecast for tomorrow (today as you’re reading this), and after a day of Andy and I sneezing from allergies, I hope it takes out everything in its path. It’s time. The day hinted at colder things to come, as Andy came in chilled from a final attempt at salvaging one more pool day if it warms up next week. I captured a few final blossoms as seen here, already slightly mottled from the cool nights, and likely to be gone by tomorrow. You may be witnessing what has already departed. Ghostly apparitions befitting the season. 

A rare moment bordering on regret, perhaps? I wonder if I should have spent more time with these begonias. They did pretty well in a season that found usual stalwarts struggling. Hidden by a pink curtain and located behind showier and taller pots of papyrus and elephant’s ear, these begonias were paired with a red fuchsia – and both performed admirably when I thought to take in their beauty. I wish I’d thought more. 

These past few weeks I haven’t been outside as much as I should have been. We’ve had some wonderful weather, but when the heart feels downtrodden a sunny day doesn’t much matter. When last I made a studied inspection of the garden, this pink petunia was throwing its vibrant neon blooms face-up to the sun. On a recent walk, I noticed all the blooms had gone, and all the stems and eaves had turned brown. With the sun comes a dryness that has taken the last efforts of the annuals. 

Now these flowers are like little neon ghosts, happy to haunt us until the summer comes again. 

Boston’s bright and bountiful beauty shines in these flower photos, taken on a rainy day and proving that sometimes a gray sky and drops of rain can add to the beauty of the world. I’ve long maintained that the colors in the garden seem stronger and more saturated now than at any other time of the year. Recompense for having to slip into the winter slumber perhaps. 

They also provide a lovely little break from the darkness that’s been posted here of late (and which has only just begun, I’m afraid to say). Contrast is vital, and dwelling in the dark for too long has never done anyone any good. Here we have a clematis, a butterfly bush, and some ruby leaves of the Judas tree. 

It was always the goldenrod that signaled the impending end of summer when I was a kid. I’d wait and watch for its unremarkable, some might say weedy, foliage, followed by this late golden bloom. Unfairly maligned thanks to its alignment with the ragweed in the air at this time, goldenrod has a bad rap, even if its pollen isn’t the airborne type that ragweed sends up our noses. The showier blooms get all the blame and only some of the glory. We want things to sparkle and shine only as much as we want to bring them low. 

Tomorrow is our dark day on the blog, in honor of 9/11, as we’ve done since my blogging began in 2003. It’s a day that feels far away. It is also, well it was also, my Dad’s birthday. It feels fitting to honor some things in silence, and I don’t feel much like writing anyway. 

Step out into the sun… 

This happy hibiscus looks positively lascivious and practically pornographic when viewed up close and personal. Violating a plant’s privacy in such a manner always makes me blush. Flowers often border on the obscene, the way they put their reproductive efforts right on display for all the world to see – the pollination, the protruding seed pods, the often-flamboyant and outright showy dispersal of said seed – it’s like some pretty porn flick extended over several tantalizingly long weeks or months. This is masterful edging, leaving the rest of us panting like amateurs. 

We can only aspire. 

Morning glories have come to signify the inevitable arrival of fall, no matter how far away it may actually be. Yes, I said the f-word, and it’s no longer something to be feared. In fact, as I approach my 49th year on earth I am faced with the irrevocable realization that I have, hopefully, moved into the autumn era of my life. I say hopefully because if I don’t make it to a ripe old age I may have been living in winter and just not have realized it in time. There’s something deeper in that than I care to analyze right at this moment – it’s enough just hinting at the fall of one’s life. 

Back to the morning glory. It is the old-fashioned blue variety that I have always favored, and of course that’s the variety that hasn’t grown for me. Instead these powerhouse pops of strident color, what everyone thinks embodies me, have been reseeding and creeping into the garden no matter how many times I pull them out. When they surprise me with a late-season bloom, I’m usually glad a few get through. 

Looking deeper into the glowing throat of a bloom, I glimpse a bit of the fall… and a glimpse of the future. 

Seen in both a hydrangea and a petunia at my Mom’s home, this striking color combination just makes me happy. I won’t sully this post by saying any more words.

Our first flush of daisy blooms is subsiding – after the past two days of crazy storms, I don’t blame them for wanting to get the hell out of here. That was madness (thankfully we only lost power for about five hours, as opposed to the three-day ordeal this winter/spring). Things are hopefully calming down a bit (climate-change deniers fuck off please) and maybe we’ll have a decent weekend for some very special guests. 

This post and its duo of daisies is a reminder of how quickly this coquette summer is flying by – a signpost on the sunny season’s journey – and an illumination of the idea that once one blooming cycle ends, another one is ready to begin. In this case, a fresh batch of daisy buds are already showing themselves, continuing the circle of beauty. It’s a good reminder for anyone who gets downtrodden by the endings in life. I’ve sometimes struggled with that too – in these daisies I find a new way to look at things, a subtle slant of perspective that changes my unease and worry just a little. That’s sometimes enough to make all the difference. 

The scent of carved wood seeps out when the air reaches the right temperature and level of humidity in the Victorian entryway of the house where we spent my childhood Fourth of July celebrations. In a large vase, a sumptuously-full bouquet of garden flowers taken at the height of their glory sprawled out from their perch. The majesty was mostly made up of a gorgeous collection of delphinium blooms – the kind that Lee Bailey once decried as too finicky and difficult to grow in his Bridgehampton gardens. 

It was one of the first times I’d see their legendary blue blossoms up close, and I wasn’t supposed to dwell very long in that deserted entry way. The party was outside, in the massive side yard where we had to play softball, and along the driveway, where enormous tires of ice held all sorts of Adirondack sodas. Typical Fourth of July trappings in upstate New York, filled with beer-swigging adults, rowdy kids, and the sort of crowd I wanted mostly to simply avoid. And so I took my time in the ruse of seeking a bathroom, and here is where I found that bouquet, and the magnificence of the delphinium. 

Back outside, in the heat and sun of the day, I followed the driveway deeper into the yard, and away from the crowd. I reached its end and continued on into the lawn, extending down to the back of the property, where voices grew dim and muffled, and the quiet that I always craved came back in temporary relief. A secluded row of gardens revealed itself behind a wall of hedge, and I found the source of the flower vase filled with delphiniums. There were only a few secondary blooms left behind, but they were just as beautiful, perhaps more-so with the imperfect zigging and zagging of the awkwardly-angled stems that didn’t make the show.

Too few flowers give us the blue of the sky. Maybe the sky is enough for all the varieties of blue it wears. Maybe the flowers wanted to fill different voids, shine in different ways. In this secluded, secret garden, I waited out a bit of the party, happier in the quiet company of the unchosen delphiniums.