Category Archives: Flowers

What is it about a flower that so soothes us?

Its beauty, its fragrance, its perfect form?

The wonder of its growth, of how it all began and how it came to such a point of prettiness?

It is all of these things, but it is also something more.

No flower lasts forever.

The very notion of its fleeting and ephemeral existence is a lesson in grace and humility.

It is also a lesson in bombast, and how to put on a show.

Flowers don’t have time to do anything but shine and entice.

Their purpose is to make an impression, a lasting impression that secures the propagation of their species.

Because of that, they are made more beautiful.

Just like the best moments in life.

The very shortness of their duration is why we love them so.

There is something soothing in such a finite experience… and something sad too.

Along the meandering Southwest Corridor Park of the South End, pockets of pulchritude lie hidden in wait for any unsuspecting passers-by to happen upon them. Little jewels, like this mound of white flowers, flutter in the fall breeze, a visual foreshadowing of a snow-laced winter to come. That elicits a slight shudder. How dare I mention the W-word at this early stage of the game. No one wants to hear that just yet.

But snow blossoms, they’re another story. I’ll always have room for a white flower. A sign of innocence, a pretend vow of purity, even if no flower is ever truly innocent. They want for nothing more than to procreate like everyone else, and devise the most ingenious ways of doing so. We’ll leave that for another post, however, for on this day, on this morning, we want only to take in the virtuous beauty.

Half-heart, half-cock and the bloody red spath of a spread vagina. Flowers are sexual creatures of exhibitionist tendencies, unfurling their sex organs with flamboyant pride. Here, a bright lemon-hued protuberance rises from its vermillion bath, firm and strong and sensing all sorts of things from the base to the tip. Surrounding its upward-tipped glory, smooth scarlet ripples fan outward, mottled with veiny ridges, shiny and at the ready for any falling drops.

Ho-ho-horticulture.

I love a golden throat, particularly when it’s surrounded by this beautiful peach color. This entire rose blossom is the artistic embodiment of a peach – soft and warm, with an inner heart that practically glows. That’s one of the most magical things about gardening for me – the subtle but distinct shading variations, and the way they continue to develop and change as the life of a bloom completes its cycle.

My only tree peony – a spicy tea-scented beauty – offers a similarly-thrilling ride as it grows from the size of a baseball to the size of a dinner plate, delicately burning a heart of red as the edges of the petals bleed a bit too.

Some blooms are better viewed en masse, but all are interesting when viewed close-up. These flowers were putting on a show on the grounds of the extensive Smithsonian museums in Washington, defying the close of the season, or perhaps exulting in its firework-like finale.

They grew on the neighbor’s chain-link fence when I was a kid. A magnificent shade of blue, like little portals of sky here on earth, they bloomed early in the day, but lasted longer if the day was dark and gray. Back then they signified summer, and summer seemed to last longer too.

Behold the morning glory. Aptly-named for its blooming schedule, they are gone by early afternoon – sometimes sooner if the day is hot and the sun is bright. Made up of one round petal, they are delicate blooms, but the plant is hardy as hell, re-seeding itself like a male whore.

The traditional blue-hued variety makes up for its simplicity with the size of its blooms. New, more varied strains with powerhouse shades of magenta and fuchsia are much smaller in size, packing their wallop in such striking colors and stripes. I veered in this direction a while back, and haven’t found the energy to go back to blue.

Personally I prefer the old-fashioned variety, even if I haven’t grown them in years. The one you see here is a re-seeded sport that has returned with a darker striped cousin. I tend to weed these out, allowing one or two vines to wind their way up through the Miscanthus and Korean lilac. I should probably provide a trellis and try the traditional blue ones again, but that will have to wait until next year.

For now, it’s almost time to tuck the garden in for a long winter’s nap.

The sweetly-scented, daintily-flowered pretty little vine of the sweet autumn clematis is an attractive, if slightly unwelcome, harbinger of fall. If you see it in bloom, you know the darker seasons are right around the corner. Still, better to go out in a blaze of bright beauty than a dried mess of faded form and long-ago-withered flowers to which so much of the garden is quickly reverting. Though there is the risk of being less noticed than those backyard attention-getters (which stun at the height of summer when everyone is there to witness the show), there is something to be said for waiting until the end to shine. I appreciate such studied patience, and I enjoy saving the best for last.

I make the same promise every year, but here it is again: next summer I will grow zinnias. Whenever I see the bouquets at restaurants or hotels spilling over with the happy over-saturated hued of zinnia blooms, I make this very vow, but I always forget, or simply don’t muster the space or will to do it when the time to do so is at hand.

They remind me of my grandmother, of carefree childhood days, of the spark of a colorful flower that thrills in an otherwise dull vegetable plot.

Yes, the world needs more zinnias.

I promise to do my part.

Bright flaming hibiscus!

You make my world so much more gay.

(And it was already pretty gay to begin with.)

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.