Category Archives: Flowers

The best designs are simple and based in the most rudimentary lessons of nature. Color combinations especially are taught to us in the way nature arranges its blooms and foliage. The golden throat of a bearded iris flanked by the purple majesty of its perfumed petals. The chartreuse leaves of the coral bark maple and the thrilling juxtaposition of its reddish stems. The striking magenta of the Lychnis tempered by the wooly gray green rosettes of foliage from which its fire rises. 

Such were the ideas of inspiration flitting across my mind when I was deciding which curtains to order for the patio canopy this summer. I decided to keep things simple, and chose a white and yellow palette like the ‘Ice Follies’ Narcissus seen blooming in the garden this week. 

The drabness of stormy days and the lingering threat of snow demanded something cheery and sunny. Last year I added accents of yellow to the patio in a table and a couple of plant stands, and no one got to see any of it. I’ve held onto them for another year, and they are quite striking when the sun echoes their glad glow. It’s sets a fun stage for outdoor visitors, and when a chill deigns to creep in at last light, these curtains can be drawn closed in a circle of intimacy and warmth. 

We’ve had an abnormally dry spring thus far, leading to problematic brush fires, and a deficit in the water that has usually saturated the ground by now. Not that I’m wishing for rainy days, but I know their importance, and the way they quickly coax reluctant bloomers into unfurling their petals and releasing their delicate perfume, like the jonquils seen here. 

This patch of Narcissus has performed reliably for a number of years – not always the case in our yard, where several patches have failed to take well after a first season of bloom, petering out to nothing but a few weak stalks of foliage, even when I’ve allowed them to ripen to shriveled form. That’s not the usual way of the otherwise-powerhouse performance of these bulbs, so I’ll enjoy the ones that do work, and keep trying every fall. 

A Saturday spring evening when the scent of jonquils is just barely in the air. I can’t tell if it’s really there, or if I just really want it to be. And so I squat down and bring a bloom to my nose, inhaling the delicate aroma, faintly sweet with a sort of tangy and tart base. I can’t describe it other than it smells like spring – impossible to capture or duplicate, and maybe that’s for the best. If they bloomed every day, and were commonplace at the florist, the way that they conjure spring would be blunted. 

Tomorrow the rains will arrive, as much a part of spring as they are cherished by the garden. If they get too rough, I’ll pick a few, as I did the ones seen here. Making it this far deserves some pampering, especially when they’re this close to the finish line. 

This recent post contained just the smallest bit of hope in a vase, and I’m thrilled to report a happy ending here. I wasn’t sure if these few felled narcissus blooms would survive a late-season snowstorm, but survive they did, opening in time for a proper Easter morning celebration. I’m hoping for similar spring miracles in the garden after a wicked winter of trials and tribulations. 

Hope is something that’s been on the distant horizon of late, and while I’ve been hesitant to reach out to it so soon (I learned the dangers of that in 2020), I am indulging in some brief bits of relief, as Andy just got his second dose of the COVID vaccine, and I’m due for my second in two weeks. 

Almost all of the people who are important in my life have gotten or are in the process of getting their vaccines, so this spring and summer looks to be a time of reunions and small gatherings with the ones who mean the most to us. That is certainly a happy circumstance – as happy as these colorful blossoms, leading the flower power brigade. 

Pinks and reds and purples, oh my! I have no more words to accompany this post, and luckily the prettiness begs for silent appreciation. 

Our ground is still very much frozen, and there is still some snow on the ground, so while spring is technically here, the true feel of it lingers a little bit behind. For that reason, my trips to Faddegon’s continue, giving me a lifeline with their greenhouses and gorgeousness, as seen in this orchid spray backed by a bed of moss. Such a scene of beauty need not a litany of words to describe it, and so I retire for this Saturday night – the first night of spring. 

Spring flowers that are kissed with color will never be unwelcome here. I think these are azaleas of some sort – their petals are painted by the powers-that-be, and the effect is striking. While I’ve never been a big fan of the over-hybridized or extra-frilly ornamental flowers that these exemplify, I’m changing in the time of the pandemic, and my tastes have shifted too. I’m less willing to find fault with certain things, and more willing with others. These flowers are not deserving of criticism – they are spreading joy and happiness and I want only to applaud that. 

They have come to symbolize the very beginning and the very end of the winter season. The bloom of the Paperwhite narcissus brings back opposing memories. It happens that I either force them first thing in season, so their blooms come just as fall is ripening into winter, or I forget about them and end up forcing them at the very end of winter, just as the first spring thaws arrive, which is what happened this year. As such, the memories they trigger are at once conflicting – the gray days of November at odds with the gray days of March – but there are joys to be found in each segment of the calendar, and in a way their stature as bookends of winter is something of comfort.

Their fragrance is polarizing – though it’s all love from these parts. It brings me back to my very first experience forcing them. A friend of my Mom, joining us for a trip to Cape Cod, regaled me with tales of the forcing process, and I listened – fascinated and rapt with wonder at this new way of getting a bulb to bloom.

“In the mornings I drank the dew that dropped from the magnolia,

At evening ate the fallen petals of chrysanthemums…”

~ Qu Yuan

There’s not much upon we can definitively rely these days – far less than ever before, it certainly seems – but there has always been a spring, in some way, shape or form. We are almost there once again, and it will be here in a  few weeks. After the past year, however, we greet it hesitantly; as welcome and as needed as it is, I’m still wary. Too many plans have been derailed, too many perfect vacations canceled and erased from the calendar. I’d rather be pleasantly surprised than depressingly disappointed. 

That doesn’t mean I haven’t given in to some of the hope that is in the air. 

A bouquet of jonquils has already come and gone in our kitchen. 

The tulips and hyacinths have started appearing in the markets.

And the primrose plants seen here are brightening up the greenhouses at Faddegon’s. 

All are signs that spring, in whatever way it will, shall come again. 

It’s been far too many years since I last attended the New England Flower Show – and to be honest I’m not even sure they were having it even prior to COVID. But every March I get the same restless hankering for something that brings me closer to spring. This year my weekly visits to the local greenhouse will have to suffice, where I can take my time walking past African violets like the ones shown here and dreaming of the days when similar blooms will be showing off in the gardens outside. 

With the exception of this crazy cactus, we don’t have any indoor plants that bloom. I’ve been toying with the idea of adding a Clivia to our collection, or finding another walking iris, but outside of bloom those are both pretty dull performers. Instead, I’ll force a few bulbs every year (a forgotten bag of Paperwhite narcissus was just discovered on the attic stairs and I immediately plopped them into a vase of water and pebbles – we will see if it’s not too late to salvage a bloom or two, as always seems to happen) but other than that our houseplants are mainly for foliage and form. The older I get the more my tastes seem to shift to the subtle. 

That doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate the blooms seen here. An African violet is a thing of beauty indeed.