Category Archives: Flowers

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. 

The over-hybridized hot-house extravagance of fanciful orchids or the bombast of brash bedding annuals that never pause bloom until frost strikes them down can lead to a fatigue of excess color and saturation. At those times, I head out of the cultivated yards and the greenhouses, and find any small patch of wildflowers – which are to be found just about anywhere, such as behind the buildings of an outlet mall (in this care the Lee Outlets) where sections of ground have gone unmoved and untended, resulting in this little muted area of wildflowers and weeds. 

The flower forms were simple, the colors were soft, and their structure was awkward, haphazard, and entirely lacking of order or organization. They were brilliant in their simplicity and softness. Seeing the scene was almost a relief to my vision – a break, a reset, a chance to cleanse the visual palette. Like a container of coffee beans between cologne samples. 

In these very late days of spring, when all the world is brimming and overflowing with super-saturated colors and fragrances, one appreciates a moment of quiet, of delicious dullness. If all you experience is one extreme after another, eventually these scenes lose their magic and power – and stretches of time like winter become more desolate and bereft of charm. Reconnecting with quieter places and moments is a trick to even out the rollercoaster of spring barreling into summer. 

Down time matters.

These bluebells were hidden in a rather untraveled woodland area of Ogunquit, off the well-tread path to and from the beach, and unbothered by the traffic and bustle of the town. Only those seeking a quieter, calmer, and less-populated area would have the fortune of happening upon these elegant flowers. 

They are part of the freshness that makes this time of the year so spectacular. It will never be like this again, and it merits a pause in the quickening downhill rush toward summer. 

Let this prose slow and stop too, to give you your own moment to pause and reflect.

Our peony parade was especially flamboyant this year – the best sort of thing a parade can be. 

Whenever I used a parade metaphor I think of the straight guy who worked with me at Structure many years ago. Out of the blue one day he came up to me and asked if I liked parades. 

“Not especially, why?” I asked with slightly-bored bemusement. 

“I had a gay uncle who loved parades so I always wondered if all gay people loved parades.”

He meant well.

But the only parade I truly enjoy is a peony parade. 

It’s difficult to pick a favorite flower, but it’s quite likely that the peony is it for me. From the happy childhood memories it has informed, to the stalwart and powerful presence it retains in the garden for decades, the peony is a popular perennial for a number of reasons, perhaps most notably for its floral fragrance and form. It’s hard to imagine a more perfect bloom.

“It always seemed to me that the herbaceous peony is the very epitome of June. Larger than any rose,
it has something of the cabbage rose’s voluminous quality; and when it finally drops from the vase, it
sheds its petticoats with a bump on the table, all in an intact heap, much as a rose will suddenly fall,
making us look up from our book or conversation, to notice for one moment the death of what had
still appeared to be a living beauty.” – Vita Sackville-West

And now I’m making a rare request and asking that you forget the words for a bit. Focus instead on the photos – and the form of the peony at hand. It is worth pausing to examine the petals at hand. 

Is there a more charming common name for a flower than ‘forget-me-not’? And is there not a more perfect pairing to the name than these adorable blue blossoms? I’ve never had any specific memory or person that bound themselves to these little flowers. The only person responsible for planting forget-me-nots in the woodland garden of my childhood was me. In some sense, the forget-me-not reminds me of the child I once was – the little boy who sprinkled a packet of seeds along a stone-laden path, then waited and watched as their tiny, slightly furry leaves expanded and sent buds into a penumbra above their miniature forest. 

The flowers – so dainty and seemingly delicate – were like little explosions of blue bliss with hearts of golden stars, white points of light emanating from the center. No matter how strong the winds, and there are always strong winds every few days at this time of the year, these little flowers stay true – unshakable until the very last moment before they let their petals fall. 

On our recent visit to Ogunquit, we came upon an entrancing patch of these flowers as we walked from the opening of the Marginal Way to dinner. We passed the hotel where my parents used to stay, and a thought of Dad tied itself to these flowers. Maybe the forget-me-not is for anyone who deserves not to be forgotten. 

At the hair salon the other night, a Filipino woman cut my hair. She’d done so once before, and I thought her accent was familiar. She asked about my last name this time, and I confirmed that I was Filipino too – Dad’s side. She talked about her kids visiting the Philippines, and the foods she made – pancit and adobo and lumpia – and I told her I made those, as well as ensaymada, which impressed her. She said her husband hadn’t taught her kids Tagalog, and I told her the scant few phrases I knew. She asked if I lived nearby and if I had a family. I said I lived with my husband, and my Mom and brother and niece and nephews were in Amsterdam. This sort of small-talk, so insignificant and so meaningful, if only to me, to this moment in my life, brought my Dad back in such an easy and everyday kind of way, even as I put him in the past tense. It was important for me to say that to this hairdresser, to let her know he left us last summer. 

And then to feel him still with me – in an accent, in a recipe, in a story from halfway around the world. 

One of the final peonies to bloom is this exquisite almost-pure white variety which comes with the most intoxicating perfume of all the peonies we grow. It is always worth the wait, even if some years result in photographic peony fatigue. That wasn’t the case this year, as most of the bloom happened when we were away in Maine (the only drawback of a Memorial Day weekend vacation). And for the peony, I have always made room and time for moments of appreciation and gratitude. 

As with many white flowers often ridiculously dismissed for their simple color, the fragrance is an additional note in their symphony of beauty. When seen with a few raindrops from an afternoon shower, the effect is even more enchanting. While we begin our documented trail of peony blooms with these lovely white blooms, they actually began with the more common hot pink variety, which is to come in all its glory. Stay tuned…

Our clematis has already leaped its way up and over its accompanying lamp post. It’s the old-fashioned and rather common ‘Jackmanii’ variety, no less beautiful for its ubiquity, but when compare with the variety seen here, a bit lacking in pizzazz. (It makes up for that with the sheer volume of its blooms, so every clem has its lovable points.) This one is electric in the make-up of its individual blooms, but I left it at the nursery because we simply don’t have space for another clematis right now. (Our climbing hydrangea has finally taken over the arbor where once a sweet autumn clematis reigned supreme.) 

These blooms though… they do call to the part of me that thrills at a good dazzler.