In the shifting light afforded by our spinning planet, the petals of a peony appear to be different shades. It is just one of the many ways that peonies enchant and enthrall. This variety has more blue tones in it than you can glean from these photos, which read much redder than it is in person. More magic, more floral trickery.
All plants bow down to the rain – it is their life-giver and maker, their source of sustenance and survival, their path to beauty and fulfillment. Only with a steady supply can they realize their destiny. Thus, they depend on it above all else. That’s how I look at the storms we’ve had of late, and it’s how I keep my own head high when they take down the iris and the peonies and the early bloomers with the heaviness of water and the weight of the wind.
Some choose not to grow certain plants because of it. Iris especially are prone to a quick felling by a late spring storm. Peonies stand a better chance, with stems that bend and sway, and the mass-support of other stems around them. An iris is a solitary flower for the most part, a skyscraper with only a single stem of support, and nothing else around them to break the onslaught of rain and wind.
Peonies, even with their heavier blooms, are slightly better equipped at withstanding the spring-to-summer onslaught. Ours have a better chance, as I stake them from the beginning. These are such long-lived and reliable plants that I simply leave the support system in place year-round, and the plants grow right up through them.
As always, preventative maintenance saves a lot of heartache down the line. Healthier plants are stronger and better at standing up through the storms. A little extra work and care in the beginning makes for a happier ending. These blooms, still standing in the spring rain, are the pretty proof of that.
A bed of peonies is the second-best kind of bed in which to be on a rainy day.
We hardly ever get to see the first peony bloom. In the fifteen or so years after planting this specimen in the front yard, we’ve only ever been around to see it open up once or twice. Usually we are on vacation in Ogunquit, Maine, when the peony parade begins. It happens like clockwork on Memorial Day weekend, no matter what kind of winter we’ve had, and no matter how screwy the rest of the seasonal line-up is behaving. We were scheduled to be in Maine again this year, but Andy’s Dad was in the hospital and not doing well, so we had to stay home. This is the consolation prize. The silver lining. And it was the best decision anyway, because time with loved ones is more valuable than anything else.
Had we gone, we would have missed out on all this beauty. I find their fragrance most potent when they first open. It’s pretty powerful at any point, but that first whiff after a whole year of being away from the authentic scent of peonies is a soul-enriching experience.
It is the scent of promise ~ the promise of summer.
It is the scent of memory ~ the memory of my childhood. A neighbor’s bed of peonies behind a chain link fence. The Ko garden filled with nodding peony heads after a heavy rain. Our living room scented with a bouquet in the cool stillness of early afternoon.
It is the scent of happiness ~ the happiness of holding a white peony to my nose in the Boston Public Garden and smiling on a sunny, perfect day.
For now, it is the scent of the present. We will return to Ogunquit this summer. At this moment, our hearts are here, and even in the rain the peonies are blooming.
Truth be told, I’ve never been a passionflower fan. There seems to be an awful lot of vining and trailing and training involved in order to produce one or two of these admittedly fascinating blooms. As a kid, this would have appealed to my over-the-top tendencies, but now I find myself looking at the whole rather than one specific attribute (such as the bloom) so I enjoy them in others’ pots and gardens, or at the bursary, which is where this shot originated.
Do not be fooled by the small stature of its individual flowers, or the soft effect their airy countenance has – the Korean lilac bears a potent perfume. It is heavenly, and one of my favorite parts of the garden right now. I see them being used commercially more and more, and I understand the appeal. Their foliage doesn’t go all mildewy, no matter how hot and humid our summers get. Their blooming period is also later than the traditional American lilac, which makes for a perfect combination. (As such, their blooms tend to fade quicker in the heat, but we’ve not had much in the last few days, so they’re hanging on for a bit longer this year. A happy trade-off for cooler temps.)
They are also a more manageable size – I cut mine back every few years to keep them in bounds – do so right after they flower so as not to reduce next year’s crop of blooms which actually set in the summer.
Another thing that sets them apart from their common counterpart is their well-behaved tendency to stay put wherever they are placed. No trailing suckers or unwanted shoots appear in their vicinity, and such manners are always appreciated in the garden.
My grandmother loved the fragrance of the lily-of-the-valley. For many a Christmas and birthday I’d gift her a body lotion or soap scented with the sweet floral notes. They are in bloom in the garden right now, and they always remind me of my Gram. The plant itself is extremely hardy, and we have several large patches of them. In one section, they are actually a bit of a nuisance, but that resilience works in the less cultivated sections, where they hold their own with the wild areas that go unchecked. That’s where I picked this bouquet.
It takes a large number of stems to make a bouquet that matters, so small and delicate are the flowers, but an abundance is precisely what we have. They also do well in smaller vases or glasses, which I didn’t really have on hand, so I shifted and arranged them to one side for these photos. Despite their small stature, their fragrance is potent, and it’s a glorious thing. Scents are some of the most powerful memory triggers.
Though I did my best to bring lilies-of-the-valley to my Gram when they weren’t in season (as most of the gift-giving times fell outside of its brief blooming period) I still wish I’d brought more bouquets of them to her. We didn’t have as many then. Sometimes our gardens bloom after we’re gone.
Look closer.
What was that tagline from? No, really, I cannot remember.
It was the tag line to something.
‘American Beauty’?
Oh well, it doesn’t much matter, but it’s quite befitting this post, whereby we see what happens when art and nature and some optical tricks conspire to conjure the ‘painting’ you see here. It’s actually not a painting or even a photograph (well, it is now, but you get the point). It’s a collection of cut flowers, displayed behind a frame at varying distances to give the illusion of being a very life-life painting. A living testament to the power of the frame.
I live for things like this: the way that art can be a certain kind of magic ~ the tricks it can play on the senses, the witchcraft it can work on traditional assumptions, the surprise and delight it can elicit from the droll sleight of hand or eyes or nose. Some of us just like to be fooled. It jolts the expected, sparking the exquisite conundrum of questioning what we think we know, and what we most want to assume. It wakes you up when you don’t even realize you’re asleep.
This exquisite peony was an anniversary gift from our Mom, who left it at the condo along with a card and gift. She chose it based on the florist’s explanation that it slowly changed into a white color (which comprised my wedding bouquet that Suzie had found seven years ago). I was a little skeptical. I know flowers, and while some do change as their blooms age, most don’t have such a drastic draining of color ~ it’s usually more subtle, a slight fading or deepening depending on which way it’s going to go. This one surprised me, and its enchanting transformation was the touchstone of our wedding anniversary weekend. It also makes for an excellent marker of anniversary posts, so here you go again.
It began in quiet, beneath the rain. The rose pink hues were just beginning to unfurl their splendor when we arrived.
As we waited for the dinner hour, and the rain continued to come down, the flower opened up in the indoor light.
Its petals gradually transformed, going from a deep rose to a coral pink that was simply mesmerizing. As for our weekend, it progressed in equally-fine form.
The rain was slowing, subsiding and returning with just a few showery bursts, and we made it to The Cleaning of the Rings staying mostly dry. Inside, the peony smiled at the lifting of the gray.
The yellow pool sacs began to swell and develop, the fiery centerpiece that perfectly set off the surrounding beauty.
A magnificent work, it looked almost good enough to eat – almost as good as this amazing cake, the likes of which we hadn’t had since our wedding day.
The peony’s color began to fade, and like marriages and wine and other things that age well, its beauty became more pronounced and delicate.
Like the brush-strokes of a fine painter, the colors took on a surreal gorgeousness, softly developing into more than the sum of their parts.
The yellow interior glowed, while the pinky rosiness moved into a softer shade of light coral, and beyond.
It was becoming before our very eyes – more beautiful, more enchanting, more lovely.
This is how beauty sometimes unfolds – the bold and brash beginning, then the gradual fading into something softer, but more lasting.
We didn’t want it to end. That’s the way it usually is with beauty. And love.
At the crux of nature and art is the featured painting by Matisse. Currently on exhibit at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, it’s a relatively calm piece, color-wise, for the artist, but one that perfectly captures the subtle shades of a bush known less for showmanship and more for fragrance. Beyond the meeting of art and nature, there is the matter of perfume – a very important matter indeed.
Lilacs seem to remind many people of their childhood, and I’m no exception. I distinctly remember the lilac bushes in our front and back yards, and the way their flowers held the water so often falling from the sky at this time of the year. Their heart-shaped leaves were the purest form of green (enjoy them now, as they usually succumb to mildew once the humidity of summer hits).
Matisse captured their subtlety in a vase, and the accompanying gray atmosphere that early spring sometimes signifies. Rain abounds during lilac season, and their subtle shades work well against a dull sky. The softness of their visage deceptively belies the perfume they produce, and it is this exquisite fragrance that pulls me, and so many others, blissfully back to childhood, and back to the beginning.
Of a season.
Of a life.
Of a lilac.
In a snowdrop,
In a line of daffodils breaking through the ground,
In a bright white Lenten rose.
The sights of the season are glorious to behold.
Tulipmania is about to begin all over again, and at the perfect time. The weather, after teasing us with an 85 degree Easter Sunday, has returned to a more normal, albeit sadly cooler, state. That’s where it should be, and as long as we don’t have a stretch of hard freezes, I’m ok with that. Besides, even if the sun fails to shine this week, I’ll have the memory of this tulip in my pocket. As you can see, it captured a little bit of sunshine within its precious petals. It’s a thrill to find those moments when nature echoes nature, reflecting its own majesty and repeating motifs in clever ways. Nature has its own inside jokes, its own winks and nods.
Certain flowers have the power to cheer. For me, tulips are first. They always make me smile. Narcissus are a close second, and maybe iris. No, it’s got to be peonies – though when I see and sniff a peony there is more than simple cheer – there are deeper emotions involved in a peony. So while it may be my favorite flower, the peony isn’t the first to cheer me. I know daisies make Suzie and JoAnn happy, and the Gerbera daisy tickles my friend Sherri’s fancy. While I’ve never grown them, ranunculus, with their deliciously twisted name, have always cheered me upon sight, though I’ve yet to buy a bunch. Maybe that will change soon. We all need a little cheer these days. In the meantime, here’s the best I can do.
This happy little daffodil (the name of which some may find objection at, but as long as they’re bright and lightly-scented, I don’t care what you call them) was part of a bouquet of blooms I picked up a couple of weeks ago. We’re just starting to see their outside cousins rise up from the chilly ground. I’m still hesitant to give everything over to spring just yet (too great a chance for a snowstorm) and part of me has halted any celebratory sigh of relief, especially when I think back to last year’s banner crop of lilac blooms that was instantly decimated by a late-season freeze. Mother Nature is to be honored, but never trusted. Unless you’re placing trust in fickleness and unpredictability.
Tom Ford did a few floral scents in his Jardin series, inspired by these spring blooms, none of which was very impressive. While some flowers lend themselves to lasting scents (jasmine, tuberose, gardenia) these early bloomers don’t give it up as easily. His jonquil and hyacinth attempts did not connect for me – spring is about something lighter, and Ford’s private Blends (with the possible exception of the summer-based Portofino collection) have too much oomph and headiness to translate the delicacy of the spring bulbs.
For me, the only way to smell these properly is to take an early season stroll and feel the soft dampness of a spring earth beneath your feet. The air should be almost as wet as the ground, and as you approach a swath of narcissus, you will smell their delicate sweetness. You should get your knees wet as you kneel beside their fragrant beauty, and it will always be worth it. Forever after, that memory will be conjured -in every passing grocery market bucket, in every fancy hotel lobby that serves up seasonal blooms, you will be brought back to the happiest time of the year when you sniff them again: spring.
A sigh, then, before the very last entries for The Delusional Grandeur Tour.
A pause, if you will, before we careen into the final plunge of this ride.
A moment, tucked into the end, and saved just for us.
For the ones who remain.
You know who you are.
A simple bouquet for your midday contemplation, in hot pink and evergreen.
A more colorful version of this companion study in simplicity.
As a wise woman once said, pink goes good with green.
