Category Archives: Flowers

Behold, the grand bloom of the hibiscus – larger-than-life (or at least my hand), this beauty is relatively easy to grow, provided it gets enough food and water. I’m slightly ashamed to say I’ve neglected this particular specimen, located at a location far from the hose, but it’s come back dependably, and I promise to do better next year. The usual promise of a gardener late in the season. I inserted my hand for a better sense of the scale of its blossom. Immense, imposing, and striking from across the yard, it makes a showy, billowing mass of color that simply riots to be noticed. At this late stage of the gardening game, one appreciates an 11th-hour showstopper.

Bold things sometimes come in small packages.

Take this Lychnis bloom, for instance.

It’s tiny – much more-so than these macro-blow-up would reveal.

Yet it can be seen from across the yard because its color is so vividly striking and pronounced.

Its leaves are a downy silver-gray, muted so as not to detract from the show above.

Together, they form a spectacular pair.

Foils are an essential part of the gardening experience.

Contrast and texture, architecture and design – these are the elements

With its long line of designer chic boutiques, Newbury Street doesn’t always make it easy for simple things to be noticed, but beauty will always rear its head above all, and that’s why these roses – fresh from a summer shower – were such a refreshing, and prominent, sight.

They fought for notice outside the colorfully-filled windows of Anthropologie and Ted Baker, and against the odds they won.

Despite the softness of their shades, their rich texture and stunning form – augmented by the beads of rain that still clung to select petals – was enough to warrant pause in my shopping expedition.

It takes a lot to stop that train.

I was grateful for the brakes.

The ubiquitous mail-box vine commonly comes in the dark purple shade of color that everyone knows – and loves – but this lighter lavender hue has brought me around to the clematis once again. They are wonderful plants if you have the vertical space and conditions they like (feet in the shade, face in the sun). For some reason, I’ve never pampered the ones we have, and they still reward us with blooms every year. I need to rectify that. If anyone knows the value of a proper pampering…

Suzie was over for dinner the other night (a dinner at which she fingered my wattamelon, but that’s another story) and it’s a fitting point of reference as she was present for the two most salient memories I have of sunflowers. Both are summer tales, meaning they’re light on substance, but imbued with the spirit of summer, at least for me.

The first was a spur-of-the-moment trip to Provincetown in late August of 1995. It was my virgin trip to that famed gay gathering spot, so I was naively unaware of the popularity of the place on summer weekends, even if it was rainy. Luckily that rain made travel a little lighter, and we rolled into a rather quiet town that was damp with the fallen water, but still warm and balmy. Of course there was no room at any of the inns, so like Mary and Joseph with a sequin purse as our baby, we made our way until Suzie found a pricey but doable pine-knotted room that would easily suffice for a night.

The sunflower memory that comes from that weekend was based on one that was blooming beside a gate near the house. I snapped a photograph of it as it shook off the rain and unfurled its sunny face to the world. Scentless itself, it took the smell of summer on as its fragrance, and every time I looked at the framed photo – which followed me from Amsterdam to Boston to Chicago and back – I smiled with the memory of my first weekend in Provincetown with Suzie.

The second sunflower memory I hold is a passing blur. Speeding along some wretched never-ending highway in Montana as we made our way across the country, a field of sunflowers stretched out on either side of us. A sea of yellow and warm summer faces enjoyed the last light of the day as we sped along, bringing Suzie home from her Seattle stint. Once again we were on the hunt for an elusive hotel at prime travel season, where the great park of America stretched its tourist call as far as Montana, making it difficult to locate available lodging. Eventually we did, rolling into some tiny and sterile Super 8, but I already had my sunflower memory to keep me warm at night. The rest was just summer fun.

The summer of ’16 is shaping up to be a rather alarming one. This is a scary time for many of us (and not just because the official Republican Platform includes gay conversion therapy – WAKE UP, PEOPLE) but I’m not indulging in scare tactics here.

Here, life is beautiful.

The guys are beautiful.

Even the orchestra is beautiful.

In mid-July, the garden exhibits its first hints of losing steam. I managed to capture these wild sweet pea shots before they started their decline, so they appear fresh and new, in the hottest shade of hot pink that the garden can muster. I’ll cut them back almost to the ground, as they are already going to seed, and one of these invasive monsters is more than enough.

For now, enjoy their strong color – the perfect reflection of this hot mid-July moment, when the world around us seems to be going up in flames, and the only thing we can do is recoil at the monstrosity and sad beauty of it all.

Though June is really the main month for roses, some spill over into July, especially as we had such a late start of spring. These pink beauties were peering over the wrought-iron fence of a typical Boston brownstone, nodding to themselves and to all passers-by in fine and fair fashion.

I was very happy to see them.

On a recent weekend in Boston, I got up-close and personal with a few showy blossoms. Like Ms. Desmond herself, they all but shouted to be noticed, so beautifully were they blooming. It was as if we never said good-bye last fall, as if there had been no winter ~ mild or otherwise. Plants can be like certain friends that way ~ you pick up right where you left off, without awkwardness or pause. These pretty things have caught my notice before ~ the rustic elegance of the Rosa rugosa, the frilly painted petals of a few rhodies, and the intricate architecture of a way-more-than-double clematis.

Caught in a focus much tighter than usual, these photos reveal even greater beauty at work than I usually notice. The markings on a white rhododendron, for example, show themselves to be a painting of stunning detail and nuance ~ a place where artistic masters may have learned their abstract craft.

These marvelously-shaded throats aren’t always immediately evident on examination from afar ~ only when you move in can you get a sense of how subtle and gorgeously-rendered nature crafts her florals.

As for that clematis, it may not be solely the work of nature. Humans can’t help but mess with things, and sometimes our efforts turn out something amazing, such as the spectacular thing you see below. Whether or not you enjoy such hybridized monsters, there is beauty in everything ~ even the garish and extreme. Thank goodness that it is so.

Here is an example of a flower I love but would never grow. One of the most beautiful perennials out there – in a rare shade of blue – this is the delphinium. The main reason I haven’t grown them is that they are reportedly rather finicky and difficult to grow well. Most require staking at some point (the bane of my gardening existence) and the soil and conditions that they like are not those typically found in the wild and unpredictable Northeast.

However, I do love them in other gardens, where I can appreciate their floral form and color without the trouble of devoting hours of time and yards of space to their cultivation. One of the more difficult lessons of gardening is learning what you can and cannot handle. Aim high, but aim realistically.

White balls of summer blossoms.

Purity.

Virginity.

Impossibility.

Give me the blasphemous black-eye of the Queen Ann’s lace over this insouciant innocence.

The celadon poppy frequents woodland areas in early spring to mid-summer, so its reign is about to come to a close. Like some humans, they wilt in the heat of high summer. Until then, however, they will throw out these happy yellow blossoms. The sap of this plant matches its flower color in vibrancy and potency, and these will stain your hands and clothing if given half the chance, so do be careful.

It’s still a small price to pay for such exquisitely delicate blooms and foliage.