Category Archives: Flowers

The days are growing longer – a couple of minutes more of light are gained every week as we round the corner to spring. It’s evident in the re-blooming of this epiphyte – more traditionally known as a Christmas or Thanksgiving or Easter cactus. It has trouble making up its mind about when to bloom, guided only by the duration of light, which doesn’t always align to our human-imposed calendar of holidays. I like that it ignores the human timeframe completely. Nature will always guide us right. 

As for this time of the year, it’s alway proven tricky. We still have a healthy few weeks of winter left, and as much as I’d love to jump forward to spring, if we leap too quickly we run the risk of losing our spring buds – the lilacs and azaleas and rhododendrons already tightly coiled and ready to burst forth into bloom. A late freeze will take them all out (and since we had a number of lilacs blooming in the late fall we’ve already lost those). Treacherous terrain, time-wise. We wait, perhaps more eagerly than any other time of the year, and wait we must. 

In such purgatorial moments, I slow my mind through daily meditations. Working to maintain a mindfulness that lasts through the day, I strive to stay entirely in the moment, focusing only on what is happening around me – not what has passed or what may come. If appreciated and inhabited fully, the present moment is all one needs to be happily content. There is beauty enough in a day, no matter how gray or dull it may at first glimpse appear. 

As our pendulum of light swings back in the direction of spring and summer, I pause to examine the vibrant blooms of this loyal plant, which I’ve had for a couple of decades now. One day it may be passed on to one of my niece or nephews, and it may go on blooming long after I’m gone, reminding someone else to find the beauty of a day in a single shaft of sunlight upon a bloom. 

They’ve been out for a few weeks now, and I’ve finally given in to the jonquils on display in all the local grocery stores. I have started to embrace the coming of spring, even if it is a bit early. Easter and Lent are early this year too, so perhaps that’s the way it’s going to be. Didn’t the groundhog predict such a thing too? Not that a rodent should prescribe for us a way of life, but whatever bit of folklore gets us through the winter… 

Whenever I pass a pot of narcissus, I pause to lean down and take a deep inhalation of their almost ephemeral fragrance. It’s something that no perfumer has successfully been able to wrangle into a bottle, and I love it all the more for that. Spring is in the air and on the wind… 

Only when viewing up close and personally can one see the subtle sheen of fuzziness that encapsulates this unrecognized flower and its buds. I adore little details like this, so often unnoticed and ignored by the casual passer-by. There are times when I must appear rather spaced-out and lost in thought as I take a moment to examine these minutiae in the local greenhouse. It’s part of being mindful. It’s a practice I’ve employed since I was a child, an inadvertent element that informed a bit of meditation I was doing without even knowing I was doing it. Noticing the details of any given moment can occupy the mind and keep it from racing with other worrisome thoughts. 

In the midst of winter, taking the time to peruse every specimen in the greenhouse is an exercise in soul-sustenance. There are hints of spring starting to show up in the garden center and in the supermarkets now – pots of spring bulbs, and renewed fresh leaves in certain plants. I want to jump ahead and entertain more serious thoughts of spring, and some mornings I indulge in such daydreaming. 

“Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.” ~ Virginia Woolf

Flowers hit differently in the winter. Scarce and more precious, they are held closer to the heart. Summer makes them superfluous, such abundance robbing us of perspective and perhaps appreciation. But in the midst of January, how grateful we must be for them to be nestled in a vase, lending beauty and fragrance to the barren snow-riddled days. 

“The flower bloomed and faded. The sun rose and sank. The lover loved and went. And what the poets said in rhyme, the young translated into practice.” ~ Virginia Woolf

There is something soul-sustaining about seeing a bouquet of flowers in the middle of winter. It makes the heart a little gladder, and the trudge through this awful weather a little easier to bear. The fragrance of roses and stock also feeds the spirit. 

“Until we can comprehend the beguiling beauty of a single flower, we are woefully unable to grasp the meaning and potential of life itself.” ~ Virginia Woolf

This is the time of the year when I begin the weekly pilgrimages to the local greenhouse in an effort to get out from beneath the dreary weight of winter. It’s not a fix-all, but it helps, and in early January every little bit of help counts. Such is the cheer that these pretty little kalanchoe blooms bring. It’s a bit early to jump to spring colors, so I’ll keep the thought until later. 

The rose has come to signify many things throughout history, and in my exceedingly short history here on earth it has been a source of multiple memories and inspirations. My very first rose memory was of our neighbors across the street, and their magnificent rose garden. It sat formally behind a meticulously-manicured hedge of privet, hidden from the distant road, and backed by a tall row of arborvitae. One side was walled by the golden brick of their garage, and the other was more naturally bordered by shrubs and trees. Inside it felt like a little secluded garden room, and it was here where various roses bloomed, centered by a magnificent old-fashioned shrub rose, with single pink blooms that appeared in profuse fashion to make up for their gorgeous simplicity. 

From there, the memory shifts to when I was a little older, and I’d convinced my parents to purchase a collection of Jackson & Perkins roses, which arrived in frightening barefoot form, their bulky crowns still caked with a bit of mud, their branches thick and ready to swell with growth. I made the mistake of soaking them in my parents’ bathtub, which quickly lined itself with a thick coating of dirt and muddy water. No one was thrilled with that, but I was sure that the show I was planning for the front and side garden would make up for that. 

When only two red bushes deigned to bloom later that season, my heart sank. Having followed all the planting directions, I was dismayed to find them underperforming, a lesson in location as well as the whims of certain summer seasons in upstate New York. 

I’d veered away from them after that, until I met Andy, who grew roses in his backyard like some magical prince. His living room, where he would sit in quiet contemplation late at night, usually held a single rose in a bud vase beside his favored chair, brought me back to the magic of roses. His Mom grew them as well, and I watched and learned his tips for dealing with blackspot and less-than-prolific bloomers. 

When we moved into out current home, we hastened to put in a few roses where we had the space and sun, but lacking in regular circulation during hot and humid summers, our tea hybrids simply didn’t thrive. Instead, we found a climber and some shrub roses to make up for them. Roses will not grow where they don’t wish to grow, and there’s no coaxing them into it. I learned to appreciate that lesson after years of pretending it wasn’t so. 

These days, we mostly enjoy our roses from the florist’s shop, where we can pick and choose and guarantee a bold bouquet of blooms at any time of the year. The last few days I’ve also been favoring my rose-scented frags in an effort to conjure some notion of summer, even if it’s just in my head and through my nose. ‘Rose & Cuir’ by Frederic Malle is a happy reminder of one of the last winters we had with Dad – I wore it to their house while I spent a day with him, and it remains a giddy memory. 

‘Rose de Russie’ by Tom Ford is a slightly more sultry take on the rose, while his ‘Oud Fleur’ simply smolders. Speaking of smoldering, ‘Portrait of a Lady’, another exquisite offering from Frederic Malle, is one of the most gorgeous scents I own, and comes with its own memories and connotations. 

That a single flower should have such sway and influence is a happy thing indeed. 

Winter songs, at least the one’s I enjoy at the moment, should be quieter moments, acoustic-like and simple, with perhaps a bit of a dour undercurrent. Especially before the onslaught of a winter storm, such as in the predicament in which we currently find ourselves in New York. Here’s a comforting one to pass the morning, a gorgeous bit of music by the aptly-named Zach Winters:

January 6 is also often referred to as the saddest day of the year, so this song resonates a little deeper. I’m leaning into the sadness this winter, finding ways of co-existing with it rather than fighting or trying to distract myself with other baubly bits of whimsy and frivolity. My life provide enough of those – I want to focus on the melancholy – not get drowned or bogged down by it – but simply experience it, feel it, let it wreak its stretches of crying, let it wring the tears and allow them to fall. Such salty water is heavy, and better drained than retained. 

I’m also learning to accept love from others as a way of working through the heartache. Andy came home with our first pot of hyacinths for the season – a trio of violet bulbs that began blooming almost the second he brought them in the door. They smelled of spring, of hope, of a time less foreboding. They felt like a hug from my husband – always welcome, always needed. 

While some are amusedly rejoicing at the sight and scent of lilacs in the fall air, I viewed them with dread and dismay. These were the buds that should be opening next spring, not in some altered climate that will spend them now, leaving the branches bereft and bare of blooms come the sunnier seasons. The same is true of these azaleas, budding out and opening in their brilliant shades of pink as we crest over the hump of October. This shouldn’t be happening now. 

Part of me wondered whether it would be best to curb my lack of enthusiasm and simply enjoy the moment, even if I know it may mean diminished blooms in the spring. I want to try that, to slip into unfettered enjoyment of lilacs and azaleas and rhododendron in the cool days of October, but I know this isn’t a good thing, and it completely robs me of the anticipation that gets us through the winter. Another thing taken by 2023…

Flowers hit differently in the fall, not only in variety, but in how they bloom. I’ve seen azaleas reblooming in this weird season, and heard tales of lilacs doing the same. In both cases, those blooms are often smaller and more delicate than their robust original forms in spring. As such, they feel more precious, more dear – a testament to the importance of timing. It’s not enough to bloom – one must do so at just the right time. As if we don’t have enough of which to keep track. 

Chrysanthemums and asters form the attention-getting bulk of the florals at this time of the year, and as seen here they are more than worthy of such admiration. Driving along many roads now one can find the combustible combination of goldenrod and purple asters in their beautifully-distracting duet. As we begin the march away from the days of summer, this beauty is a balm. 

Pale of color and small of stature, the blooms of this wild morning glory aren’t nearly as eye-catching and attention-getting as their more hybridized relatives, but what they lack in impact they make up for in tenacious spunk. These unassuming charmers can take the smallest sidewalk crack in the most hospitable downtown areas and turn them into a tropical-feeling paradise in a single summer season, running rampant over concrete and chain-link fences and transforming them into spaces of unexpected beauty. I still recall a particular plant that had worked its way up twenty feet of ugly fencing in downtown Chicago, valiantly blooming in the midst of a deadly heatwave.

I admire that sort of performance, the way they own their wildness and bloom their heads off in the name of survival. I also admire anything that does its best to bring about beauty in unlikely places. 

A minor re-blooming at the tail end of the season is always a welcome sight, particularly when one manages to capture it in the almost-golden hour. Sunlight slanting through the petals of a clematis bloom illuminates things differently depending on which side it’s on. When viewed head-on, with the sunlight falling directly on it, the petals feel warmer, the veining richer; when viewed from behind, the blue of the sky as its backdrop, it feels decidedly cooler, and more crisp. 

The shift from summer to fall, in spite of all atmospheric evidence to the contrary, has begun. One wouldn’t know it from the 90-degree days that are in full-effect, but it’s happening. These last few summer days will find me hiding from the sun and heat; I wrote this summer off a while ago. I will try to embrace them, and inhabit them as they come. I will try to be present, to experience what remains of this season and not wish or rush it away. I will also eagerly anticipate the fall, and even the winter; it is time for the gardens to go to sleep for another year. 

Part of me has been wishing August away as quickly as possible. 

You might too if you’d had the August I’ve had.

Part of me wishes there was more than this last week left. 

For all the awfulness that this particular August has provided, there has also been beauty – a beauty and tumultuous abandon that have acted as a balm upon the bruised heart. For every ravaging storm, there was a sunny day of respite that followed, for every bit of disenchantment, a revelation of hidden magic. Summer carries its own reserve of illusory coping mechanisms. Mounted insecurely on the whims of some fluffy seed-head, it scatters its hope for the future on the crest of the wind, riding the air like some salty sea wave. 

Last night, the rains moved back in, and it felt like a stormy fall night. We had a quiet dinner with Mom, and we took a moment to take in the fact that this was my first birthday without Dad. The beginning of a year of such firsts, and it felt a little daunting. We got through it together, and as we shared some birthday dessert back at Mom’s new home, it felt warm and cozy, like Dad was still protecting and guiding us.

That’s what will see us through the next year of firsts.