Category Archives: Flowers

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?

Every year about this time I start getting antsy for spring. The paperwhites I forced earlier have long since spent and withered their blossoms away. The few scant hyacinths I have in water are just beginning to break bud, and a trio of amaryllis I got on clearance haven’t even been planted yet. The lull merited this emergency post of supermarket flowers to see us through the weekend with a bit of emotional joy.

I don’t know if we’ll make it to the New England Flower Show this year, or if it’s even still a thing. I also doubt this year will mark our pilgrimage to Longwood Gardens and their Himalayan blue poppy display, as we’re more intent on making it to Savannah before the spring comes. That means posts like this, and visits to local greenhouses, will have to suffice.

Fortunately, a flower, no matter where it blooms or how it’s procured, always manages to make an impression. It is a balm on the winter-weary soul, a comfort for cold-weather agitation. Even the mere notion of a bloom, such as in this otherwise empty blog post, supplies the senses with something like hope. Spring will come again, and the land will be lush and green and vibrant.

A happy bloom passes the day.

These beauties were in full bloom for Thanksgiving at my parents’ home, so unlike my Halloween bloomer, it seems they got the holiday bloom time memo and waited until the right time. Not sure they’ll hang on until Christmas, but isn’t that an apt metaphor for us all?

I love their photo-sensitive time-frame, and the reliable (or almost reliable) way they gauge the time of the year. These may have a rebloom around Easter, signaling the end of winter, which is much happier than the start. Their color is appreciated at any time of the year, but it’s especially festive right now. My plants never seem to cooperate when I need them to bloom at a certain time – witness the Brugmansia that steadfastly refused to dangle its deliciously-scented trumpets during countless summer parties. I’ll try to change that with a few pots of Paperwhite Narcissus that I’ve been planting in waves to ensure blooms over a longer period of time. We shall see…

This poor cactus doesn’t know when to put on its show. Sometimes it hits for Halloween, sometimes it waits until Thanksgiving, and once in a while it’ll do a brief reprise around Easter. It’s never managed Christmas, which is fine; there’s too much else going on at that time. I’d rather it be spaced as it is. Maybe that’s why it’s in bloom now – to avoid the rush and bluster and risk of getting lost in the shuffle. I admire such planning and foresight.

Its blooming cycle is dependent upon how many hours of daylight there hour, and since it’s located in an unused storage room (or former work-out room back in the days when I could feign working out), where it gets no artificial light, it’s been pretty reliable. Just not reliable enough to schedule a holiday around it. Halloween is a far cry from Thanksgiving, and I’m giving thanks for that because no one is near ready.

Personally, I like its reliance on a general timeframe, as well as its refusal to adhere to a strict schedule. I’m that way too – I love structure and schedules, but I like room within them to move about freely. Contained chaos. Controlled craziness. The lessons of a cactus. (I’ve already got the prickly part down pat.)

An unexpected reprieve from fall’s cold cadence, Andy heated the pool for two extra 80 degree days in mid-October, and I dove into both of them with the honor and reverence due. One doesn’t take such balmy weather for granted this late in the game. As I floated there, feeling the luxurious release from gravity on my ever-aging body, I smelled the lemon-like perfume of the angel’s trumpet. This year it has grown into tree-like glory, rising up and over the canopy frame that long ago shed its summer canvass. Thanks to a benign fall, the plant is still in full bloom, even if most of its leaves have fallen. I will cut it severely back at the first frost, and try to overwinter it again. Some things are worth a little winter pampering, and this fine specimen has provided a summer of beauty and perfume. It’s the least I can do.

As for the rest of the backyard patio, we’ve long ago let it go to proverbial seed. The straggly sweet potato vines have alternately floundered and flourished in these warm fall days. An especially vigorous stalk has trailed itself over two lounge chairs, giving the first indication of a ‘Grey Gardens’ deterioration. We seem always on the cusp of crumbling. There is beauty in such decay, though – I know this to be true.

I’ll make a game attempt at overwintering our banana tree too. That did exceptionally well and deserves a chance to come back next spring. A bit of extra work and care now may return an investment: a jump on next year’s growing season. It’s never too early to plan ahead.

September has a way of making its flower colors pop, perhaps more-so than any other time of the year. I think it’s the cooler temperatures and the lower slant of the sun in the sky. The blue seen above is the deepest it gets in September. That makes the perfect foil for some of the year’s brightest blooms. 

This summer got off to a very late and stunted start. I thought we had caught up, but based on the late appearance of the morning glories and seven sons’ flower it seems we are still a bit behind. Normally I don’t mind extending things for as long as possible; this year we are ready to move forward. Still, let’s not rush such beauty. Let it linger as long as it likes. 

The dusty town of Hoosick Falls is where my grandmother was born and raised, and in which she spent about 80 years of her life. When we were old enough to stay on our own, my brother and I were each allotted a couple of days each summer to spend with her, and they were golden memories that remain woven in my heart. Summers were hot and humid then, but I was young enough not to mind. Gram had a couple of fans that oscillated near the windows at night, when I was camped out on a gorgeous green tufted velvet sofa.

This was the second apartment I would know in Hoosick Falls. The first, scene of childhood Easters, was right near the railroad. The train would charge through and shake the entire house – a thrill to us children, especially in the middle of the night. All Gram’s music boxes and whimsical tchotchkes would rattle and clink, while my brother and I would pretend an earthquake was rocking the land like some cheap ratings ploy on ‘Our House’.

In her second apartment, we were far from the railroad, but at the bottom of the main street that came into town. It was the home of a retired doctor, though ‘doctor’ meant variable things in my grandmother’s day. He was an irascible old man, who sometimes rubbed Gram the wrong way, but it was a decent enough space, so she stayed there for a number of years. I remember the summer most in that space.

We would spend the day walking the block or two into the main stretch of town – where the antique store was, and the old drugstore, and the church that Mom made sure we attended if we happened to be there on a Sunday morning. Gram would have taken us anyway; the way she constantly worried her rosary was a continual reminder of her Catholic faith and fears. Just up the street was where my Mom had attended Catholic school.

We would walk to see Gram’s relatives and friends, and on shopping days we would travel quite a distance to get to the Grand Union, which was over a bridge and across a busy stretch of road and I always marveled how she did it in the winter. We took things slow in the summer, happily settling into a routine of daytime television, a daily excursion, and then a homecooked dinner or meal at a relative’s. Mostly, though, I remember short walks around her house, and the little patch of dry dirt bordered by a worn wooden fence where a small stretch of pink cosmos rose and gave glad tidings to those of us lucky enough to pass. Occasionally the doctor would be nearby, waiting in the shade and watching, and as much as I distrusted him (I would always side with Gram in all her personality conflicts and peccadilloes), he was kind enough to me. Not all adults were so inclined.

I brushed by the feathery leaves of the cosmos, and peered into the happy yellow center of each vibrant pink bloom, while overhead the sun beat down and the sky was light blue and the world seemed to stop for a moment. Like the goodness that was an endless summer, so too was my grandmother, whose love knew no bounds, and who could be counted on to give her grandchildren the childhood she had rebuilt in her memory. Her past was painted over in shades of rose and pink, as if she had uncovered the secret to making a summer in Hoosick Falls no less beautiful than the perfect patch of cosmos around the corner.

This summer, I planted cosmos for the first time in a long while. They didn’t come up as well as I remember those from my grandmother’s place. Maybe the soil was too rich and damp. Maybe they liked it dry and unwelcoming. A bit of hardship to make them feel alive. Like my Gram, they were survivors, and had no need for the pampering and care I so badly wanted to provide. Yet I managed to coax a single bloom from the packet of seeds I’d scattered and raked gently into the soil back in the spring. It winked at me like a Grandmother might, then went on its way being pretty just for the sake of being pretty.

Behold the simple daylily. Found roadside on many a stretch of America, these common plants are synonymous with summer. Fiery, fresh, and gone too soon, they share many of summer’s traits. Each blossom lasts but a single day (if that) but many buds are held by each stem, giving the appearance of a longer blooming period.

One of my self-imposed childhood chores was to deadhead these in the border I planted in our backyard. I’d ordered a collection of hybrid daylilies from Wayside Gardens, to supplement the single substantial mound of the traditional form you see pictured here, which up to that point had been our only brush with this easy-going plant. Its strap-like foliage stayed handsome year-round, and even though the blooming period of a single bud was a day, their voluminous grouping of buds made for a decent few weeks of successive color. For that reason, daylilies became the early backbone of our garden.

Today, I still thrill at the sight of a wild patch of these blooming in almost unassuming fashion. They occupy a rare room of memory in which the reality matches up with the fantasy. For me, the fantasy was finding a flower like this blooming in a stretch of forest edge beside an unlikely section of road. It was near my old elementary school, down a bank littered with mostly deciduous trees. There, beside the sidewalk, was an impressive stand of daylilies, nodding their orange blooms beneath the dappled sunlight. They were set back a bit from the road, and I wondered whether anyone else had seen them. For me, it seemed like a delicious secret. I ventured down there one day to inspect them up close. The walk was longer than I’d usually go, and that section of forest was unknown to me so I had to be more cautious. Eventually, after a battle with some hefty wild grapevines, I found the daylilies.

They were even more exquisite at close range, where I could better appreciate the bright green leaves and slender stems, along with the brightly-colored flowers – all fire and glowing embers, like little goblets of flame held aloft on torches of green. There was a dip in the ground nearby, which filled with water during the wetter parts of the year. It lent a tropical aspect to the space, and next to the daylily blooms it was like some snippet of paradise, as far removed from upstate New York as one could be.

I savored the moment and embedded the memory in my mind, where it remains to this very day. Summer works its wonders…