Category Archives: Flowers

Strange as it may seem, a little sadness and heartsickness have always been the mark of a good weekend or vacation. That is to say, if at the end I feel a little empty and down after a particular weekend, it’s a sign that a very good time was had, and I file it away in my room of happy memories. Last weekend we had one of those times, and we didn’t even need to leave Albany for it to happen.

Andy’s second cousin Tyler, and Tyler’s boyfriend Kevin, were visiting the East Coast from Arizona, so we offered to host them on their way to various parts of New York. Apparently/reportedly/supposedly I met Tyler at one of our first parties at our current house, a rare gathering of Andy’s family and extended family. It was years ago, and mostly I just remember making a bunch of apple martinis for his Dad. (The use of an apple martini should be a faux-carbon-dating technique to indicate just how long ago this was.) Tyler was just a kid, and likely didn’t register on my radar because, well, kids. I had a blast with his parents and they remain some of my favorite people. In the ensuing years, Tyler crept into that circle of favorite relatives as we’d see him at the occasional birthday or wedding or funeral – the extremes of life, along with all the heightened emotions and mental mayhem that go along with such gatherings. He and his parents were always a bright spot for me. As he grow into a young adult, it was easier to talk to him, and his intelligence and wit were keen indicators of where he was headed.

We had last seen him on a visit to New York, just as he was about to depart for Arizona. After a double-dose of Harry Potter plays, we slid into the last hour or so of service at the Chatwal, where Tyler and a couple of his friends regaled us with tales of youthful exuberance, and Andy and I moved into the older generation of gay couples without further ado. There’s something very special about when a family member becomes a friend. It doesn’t always happen that way.

When we heard they were going to be in the area Andy made sure to insist they spend a few days with us. There’s no better way to step into the summer season than to do so with a few guests.

The house was filled with Chinese dogwood branches (a nifty way of making maximum use of the remnants of judicious pruning) and a couple of bouquets of roses. It’s all too brief a season, so we must make the most of the time when it’s in residence. The same goes for guests, and Tyler and Kevin proved to be the spark that spun spring into summer.

We began with a sunny day by the pool, and I whipped up some Senor Sandwiches from this crazy-good recipe by Pati Jinich. A supply of grapefruit cocktails was on the ready, and the sun moved across the sky. Having taken the red-eye, both Tyler and Kevin needed a nap. Andy did too since he had been up all night making sure we got Madonna tickets (more on that happy tale later). Everyone slept until it was time for dinner, when we switched to the first rose of the season and a casual Filipino feast.

Suzie and family joined us for dinner and swimming, and then we stayed up into the night, talking and making brunch plans…

When I think of June, I often think of Lee Bailey, the gardener/chef/designer/lifestyle guru who was Martha Stewart before she became Martha Stewart, and who passed away several years ago. His books, such as ‘Country Weekends’ and ‘Country Flowers’, remain among the most inspiring in my collection. I’ve been perusing his Southern cooking recipes in preparation for an upcoming weekend in Connecticut. (Hey, it’s south of us, so Southern cooking will work. Anything warmer than Zone 5 will be a welcome blast of heat at this point.)

Mr. Bailey once described June as the time of the year when the roses were practically tumbling off their trellises, so prolific and abundant was their blooming power during this month. June is certainly one of the happiest months, containing within it the last day of school and the first day of summer and the promise of a sunny stretch of warmth (even if may not arrive until July).

June is all hope and freshness and beginnings, and it shows in the blush of the roses.

At the height of daylight, an azalea stands brightly in the splendor of it all.

The vibrant pink is set off in striking fashion by the new chartreuse foliage of the season.

Spring should not be subtle.

It should scream and shout and announce its arrival and presence with all the brazen brilliance it can muster. It goes by too quickly to be quiet about it.

I’ve noticed that the azaleas have made a glorious showing this year. I don’t grow any at my home, but it’s nice to see when somebody else does. Personal preference only – when done correctly they make a handsome presence, especially at this time of the year.

So let us have spring, vibrant and electric and alive! Let it sing to us at full volume, let it shock us with its brassy, brazen boldness! It is but the prelude to summer…

Rooty-tooty, fresh & fruity, dare we say spring is on the actual horizon?

Did we see a glimpse of the elusive sun at long last?

I’m not saying anything, lest we jinx anything and scare the sun away.

Fickle heavenly bodies are too easily spooked.

Leave the celestial beings to other realms.

Give me the flowers and the dirt and the crumbled stone of the earth.

The ground beneath my feet.

The solid-as-a-rock bed upon which we walk.

I’m already too prone to flying away.

Here are a few more floral scenes for spring.

Shaking off her wet drooping head, she smiles at me with her sweet perfume, giggling in spite of her wet environs. An extended rainy spell has left us all hungry for Spring Proper. Let’s be fair, we deserve it after winter, but it hasn’t rally happened yet. All we’ve had are all-too-infrequent glimpses of where we should be. Yet this happy lilac provided the smile and the happiness I needed to make it through yet another rainy day. 

For whatever reason, the scent of lilacs recall childhood memories for many people. How did we all come upon this shared fragrance trigger? I’m not sure. Maybe it’s because I’m surrounded by people born and raised in the Northeast, where lilacs find their desired atmospheric conditions. I don’t know and I don’t particularly care – I’m just happy that it’s so. I wish you could smell these. It eases a rainy morning. 

PS – More lilacs are on the way…

And the hope of May flowers must keep us going. The forecast is looking pretty shitty for the upcoming weekend, which is always disheartening when there is so much fun to be had outside. No matter, whatever will be, will be. Besides, the earth needs the rain right now, and if this helps produce a glorious garden later then it will have been worth the dampening of spirits. As Mr. Python once extolled in song and practice, ‘Always look on the bright side of life.’ 

To the end, here are a couple of April blossoms to set the stage for May glory. This is a daffodil and some grape hyacinths – a match made in color palette heaven. When in doubt, let nature make the bouquet. Both of these bulbs require some forethought and planning – they must be planted in the fall for these spring blooms. I like that sort of design. It reminds us that we need to plan occasionally, and that without some organization we might miss out on such rewards. A happy lesson for all of us Virgos, or anyone who enjoys keeping their life on track. There is enough we cannot control. Let’s design what we can, when we can, because the world is ready to topple us all at any moment. Stand strong, little bulbs. Your beauty has been well-won. You are right on schedule for when we need you most. 

The jonquils have started appearing at local markets – a sure sign of spring just around the corner, even if it’s a big-ass corner that it feels we’ll never quite round. Take solace in little gifts like this – they make the day prettier. The scent – delicate and ephemeral and never quite captured by any perfume thus far – is divine. Tom Ford tried with his Jardin series (Jonquille de Nuit) but the line was almost sickly sweet, with nothing to balance such potent floral notes. Sometimes less is more, as in this simple bouquet.

There is just enough green from the stems to offset the bright canary blooms, and for the first bouquet of the season it’s best to keep things simple. Like those first Technicolor films, when audiences weren’t quite used to so much color after so many years of sepia, we ease into it, stepping gingerly into the land of Oz from our basic Kansas beginnings.

Personally, I can handle more, but it’s good to refine the eye and gently coast into the riot that is spring. We will have more than enough opportunities for color explosions come later in the season. It is, after all, still winter. 

When the outside world grows dull in winter grays and browns, as it is wont to do at this purgatorial time of the year, I look to the local greenhouse to cheer me up with orchids and bromeliads. Faddegon’s just had a sale on these beauties, so I stopped in to get some floral therapy. It always works.

Bright shades of pink do wonders for the winter-weary soul; when framed with green they are even more stunning. While these blooms look impossibly-exotic and difficult to care for, but the Phalaenopsis is an easy-to-grow plant when it gets enough light and humidity. I find in these northern climes, even full sun is not strong enough to bother them. (Usually, if they aren’t performing well, it means they require more light and/or more humidity.) 

Bromeliads also like bright indirect light and lots of humidity, so they’ll do well in a kitchen or bathroom environment. Sadly, we don’t have enough space or light to grow many orchids or bromeliads, but they are a joy to gaze upon in a greenhouse. One day I’ll find a garden room, so let that wish go out into the universe and manifest itself in some lucky happening. 

I was very young when I first felt one with my fingers.

I’d stepped into the open crotch and raised myself up into arms that reached skyward.

It must have been a warm spring day because my memory tells me it was summer when it happened but the bloom calendar has this in dispute. Pussy willows bloom in early spring, so when I climbed into a large specimen as a child it was probably only April. Near the bottom of a slight slope in our neighbor’s yard, a magnificent pussy willow shrub had grown into a substantial tree, making use of the water that would occasionally dampen that section of yard.

Like forsythia and witch hazel, pussy willows marked the early spring blooms that signaled the happy demise of another winter. I bent a few twigs, breaking them off, and quickly climbed down, the little fuzzy prize procured. I don’t know why I would have been so high in a tree so early in the season, but kids are weird that way. Whenever the fruit trees bloomed I seemed to find myself up in their boughs, gleefully avoiding the buzzing bees making their pollinating rounds.

There is no more narrative on that pussy-grabbing day – I only remember being in the pussy willow and taking a few small stems with me. I think it remains in my memory bank because I have always thrilled at famous flowers or fruits being found in their native habitat, growing happily outside. Having seen the pussy willow in bouquets on various teachers’ desks, and learning about them in class, I was enrapt by their existence outside in a neighbor’s yard. It’s the same spell that was cast as I passed a tree fern and a stand of blooming agapanthus just casually thriving in a San Francisco courtyard. I was an adult then, but I remember it distinctly because we don’t see such things in the wilderness of upstate New York.

The renowned furry buds of the pussy willow are actually the catkins of the male flower. That’s right – the trademark kitten-like blooms that give the pussy willow its name are guys. The actual flowers that later appear are like tiny little clouds that dance about the fuzzy catkins. It’s all rather charming and mysterious, not unlike the shift from winter to spring, where things seem to happen in the mystical night, and life begins again as ice melts into water and the sounds of peepers fill the darkness.

Andy’s Mom loved these blue iris, something we had in common, as irises were one of my favorite flowers as a child. Back then, it was the bearded iris that held my interest – with their gloriously larger-than-life form (beard and all) along with their spicy fragrance. The garden at the Ko house had a border of bearded iris, where they bloomed right around the time the peonies were putting on their show, just before the Centaurea and their bee-enticing flowers came into play. 

As I grew older, and my gardening tastes refined, my preference for bearded iris shifted to the Siberian and Japanese varieties, which were more elegant, bloomed later in the season, but sacrificed some of that distinctive scent. Their foliage was also a deeper green, and much less rigid than the stiff swords of their bearded brethren. 

Andy brought this big bouquet of blue iris for our Sunday brunch a couple of weeks ago. We both needed a dose of spring. A few days of a fleeting February thaw weren’t enough; these flowers gave us happy hope. They remind us of sunnier days.

Luckily we also noticed that the light is lasting a few minutes longer with each passing day. The eyes of an iris look ahead to the spring, and so do we. 

In the practice of flower arranging, I find it best to be flexible. It is necessary to accept imperfections and unexpected changes, to go with the flow of where a bouquet wants to take you, rather than trying to tame an impossibly-wayward branch. There are people who will prune and clip and snip and cut to make a flower arrangement bend to their wish and whim; that’s never been my preferred method of putting nature on display.

A wonderful example of how cut flowers don’t always stay where they’re put is the tulip. From the end of the leaves, to the wildly curving stems, a tulip has a mind of its own, and shortly after being places just so in a bouquet, they will bend and twist based on light and shadow and their own internal machinations. I love them for it.

When bought in bud, you can put them into a strict structural arrangement, but after a day or two they will undulate and turn, shifting their petals and leaves and stems into a form that can best be described as yearning. For freedom, for sunlight, for beauty – only they know their motivation. It’s quite beautiful once you accept their refusal to stay committed to any single form or place.

In the “arrangements” you see here (if you can consider a bloom or two a proper arrangement), the tulips are just beginning their journey. They will soon curve their spines, lift their leaves, open their petals, and otherwise shift their shape throughout their life in a vase, and it will be an ever-changing display that irks those who demand compliance and delights those of us who embrace defiance.

My first time at the Honest Weight Coop in Albany was a happy surprise. I was not expecting to like a place that was, in my closed mind, a magnet for bulk-buying granola folks looking for quinoa and patchouli. Suzie had chosen the location for lunch, which puzzled me because I was certain there was no table service. Of course there wasn’t, but there were a few tables, and the wraps and salads looked good. The day was so sunny that I couldn’t complain.

Better than that was the selection of vegetables and other healthy food that dovetailed perfectly with a desire to eat better. I perused the aisles while waiting for Suzie, and found a bouquet of waxflowers and eucalyptus. The latter is one of my go-to items for getting through the winter. This is the traditional gray-green version, and while I prefer the silver-dollar ones, both produce a cozy, winter-ready fragrance that carries just enough menthol heat to chase the cold weather away. When their vase life is done (and they will last an extra-long time) and they turn dry and brittle, I will boil them and cleanse the air with their pungent aroma.

In California, I’ve walked and driven through groves of eucalyptus. When you spend most of your life in such a cold climate, it’s a wonder and a joy to come upon temperate plants growing outside. I always thrilled at that. They grew tall and big there, reaching high into the air, dropping their scented leaves onto the forest floor and sprinkling the land with their magic. Their fragrance brings me back to beauty, and reminds me that there are places in the world where winter is not so vicious.

During these winter months, the best bouquets are simple ones. Case in point in this collection of Leucadendron. It’s actually three bunches arrange into one larger clump for impact. En masse, most plants known most as filler or for foliage, transform into something spectacular. The Leucadendron here also has enough textures and differing shades that it engages and sustains its visual interest. 

People often seem to be daunted when it comes to how to arrange flowers, or what to do with them. This is a great example of how to make a scene sing. Volume, simplicity, and trimmed lower leaves (which serve double purpose for showcasing the lovely red singer of the stems). 

I know little to nothing about the Leucadendron genus. The main, and most important, aspect to them is their long and persistent vase life. These have been going for a week strong and show no signs of fatigue, yellowing or mellowing. They would make a great backbone for any bouquet, but why not let them shine and take center stage themselves? Who would deny they are worth it?