Category Archives: Flowers

Since it is one of my favorite plants, the spread of this Sweet Woodruff (Galium odoratum) is not an unwelcome bit of invasiveness, at least at this point. Started from a few small clumps gleaned from my parents’ backyard (where it has also made a decent-sized mat), it has spread and formed a lovely groundcover in two areas. I may transplants a few divisions and let it take over some of our unkept area on the side of the house (where it will hopefully choke out some of the more annoying weeds).

I’ve read that some people use the leaves of Sweet Woodruff to make May wine. Personally, I prefer my wine at every month of the year, and without the wait of fermentation and such, so there will be no wine from this green carpet, only the white blooms currently in their glory.

These pea-like blooms belong to the Redbud tree (Cercis) currently blooming in our front yard. This year marks its best flowering yet; the first two springs it produced only a few blooms, and I was beginning to worry. Those fears were laid to rest when I saw the buds forming earlier in the season. Like the American dogwood, this tree flowers before the foliage appears. Going one step further in uniqueness, it flowers directly from the bark, as opposed to the ends of the stem, like most trees.

The origin of its common name is under dispute. Some say it was the tree that Judas hung himself from after betraying Jesus. Others contend the flowers and seedpods resemble the hung Judas after said act. Whatever the reason, great tragedy often belies great beauty.

The slightly heart-shaped leaves remain fresh and vibrant throughout the summer season, a boon to its sun-baked location beside the driveway. This was one of those unassuming below-the-radar trees that I never gave much thought to until late in my gardening game. I was impelled to try it out when reading about its beauty in a tree guide book. The author was so enamored that he claimed if he had but one tree to grow in the world, the redbud would be at the top of his list. What can I say, I’m an easy target for (and source of) dramatic exaggeration.

Though it has the blazing fire-truck red of tulips and the blaring yellow trumpets of daffodils, spring is better-known for its softer palette of pastels, as evidenced by these photos. Whites and pinks and baby blues – the season of infancy knows how to tread lightly, and to wondrous effect. A cloud of forget-me-nots floats just above the ground, its mottled variegated foliage touched by silver and sage.

I grew some of these at my childhood home, in the woodland garden, where they could go freely to seed. Technically, they are biennials I believe, but their seeding is so prolific you can usually count on them for more than a few years, if you are flexible with where they land, or make some careful transplanting upon germination. The pretty foliage does tend to die back in the summer, which is why I never put them into the more formal beds.

The pink ranunculus above has always been one of my favorite flowers, though I’ve never grown them in the garden. The rose-like blooms come in shades both bold and soft, the latter seen here. They may work better as cut flowers.

Finally, the windflowers (Anemone) above are a deceptively fragile-appearing tough bunch, their corms surviving an often-hostile Northeastern winter. I grew these one year in a too-unforgiving spot, where they came up but once, and then I forgot about them and they never returned. Apathy is a terrible thing, often more viciously cruel than an outright infliction of pain or hurt. Better to learn these things in the garden than somewhere else…

The last set of cherry blossom photos, for now, taken in the last sunlight of the day. That golden hour makes many things more beautiful, shading them in a deeper way. The dying light of a day is often its finest.

This is the weeping cherry that sits diagonally across from the white cherry previously depicted. Its blossoms are a little fancier, but not quite as fancy or large as the Kwanzan (the last of our cherries to bloom). It strikes a nice balance between the perhaps-too-simple white cherry and the perhaps-too-overwrought Kwanzan.

The cherry trees in the backyard are in their prime and glory, with blooms tumbling off tiers of branches, and petals falling delicately in the wind. In the warmth and sun, they don’t last as long, but the trade-off for the fine weather is more than worth it. I planted this tree when we first moved into our home. Barely five feet tall then, it soon shot up and out. Ten years later it’s about twenty-five feet taller (and in dire need of further pruning, but not until these beautiful blossoms fade).

This is a single-flowered cherry tree, and one of the earliest. It flowers before most of the foliage leafs out fully, lending it an aspect of elegance as the blooms are held starkly against branch and sky. It begins white, changing gradually to the slightest shade of the lightest pink toward the end of its blooming cycle. Fruit – inedible for most folks – will appear later in the season, but it usually gets eaten by the birds before the fall. (In fact, I’ve never seen fruit on the tree once the leaves have fallen, and most is picked off before it’s even ripe.)

A promise kept by Mother Nature, these flowers linger into the lusty month of May. It is one of my favorite times of the year – when all is hope and promise – and the garden begins its first major flush of bloom. The featured photo is a small group of hyacinths. I planted these a few years ago. The first year of bloom is the spectacular one – with the full head of blooms, looking almost fake to be so perfect. The years that follow settle down into a more natural state, as seen here. I personally find that first year a little overbearing, at least in the plant world. This is the way it should be.

Next up is our cherry tree, a single-flowered variety (the Kwanzan explosion begins a bit later). While the blossoms are simple and small on their own, taken together they light up the sky with bright criss-crossing branches of blooms, presented before the onslaught of foliage, and all the more impressive for it. Examined closely, they reveal details that might otherwise go overlooked: as these age, they will turn the slightest bit pink at the center and edges. It’s a subtle change, usually missed for the quick duration of its stay, coming as it does near the tail end of the bloom’s life.

After the drawn-out winter we had, it’s not just the flowers that offer sweet relief, as evidenced by this stand of chives in the sun. One of the things I like best about this time in the gardening year is how bright the greens are, how fresh they look. For many people, gardening is all about the flowers – how to get the biggest, brightest, and most abundant. For me, it’s also about the foliage ~ the texture, the hues, the shape, the style. The endless variety of life, teeming with possibility, at one of the most beautiful months of the year…

This old cherry tree lives beside an old, out-of-commission, slightly dilapidated church in downtown Albany. I don’t pass it as a rule, but it seems every year at this time we find our way on a different path that brings us near it. And then I make Andy pull over so I can get some photos.

It’s in a semi-sheltered area, so it comes into a bloom a few weeks before our cherries start their show. It’s much more immense than any of ours, full of well-earned character, multiple-trunks, and tier-upon-tier of weeping pink blooms. In the midst of a bleak downtown, an abandoned church, and a dreary lot, this tree blooms and transforms the world around it for a few days.

After two full-days in the garden – heaving and moving four cubic yards of mulch (that’s a freaking lot), transplanting and repositioning certain plants, amending and pruning others, my body and brain are both fried. I’m a little apprehensive of what tomorrow morning will bring after everything I did to my physical being this weekend, but it’s a good kind of pain. For now. And it was not without its rewards in wisdom. Here are a few choice notions that crossed my mind over the past two days in the garden:

• If I ever write that gay garden porn memoir/guide to life I’ve long threatened, it shall be titled ‘I Should Have Worn Knee-pads.’

• In a pinch, it is possible to steer a wheelbarrow with one hand and one hip, for emergency wiping of sweat off the brow (and it doubles as good by-stander entertainment too).

• When push comes to shove, and there’s dirt on the glove, you can push your glasses up with your elbow.

• Mucus is NASTY after you’ve been breathing in tiny dirt particles all day.