Category Archives: Flowers

The lilac forms an integral part of many childhood memories; its perfume is enough to bring back any number of magical spring moments. This is the third installment of our purple-hued trilogy, following the violet and the tulip, and it is by far the most gloriously fragrant. 

This is the single-flowered non-hybridized variety, and its simplicity is part of its rustic charm. For all the love so many of us have for excess and frills (guilty as charged) I find my own style preferences leading toward the simple and streamlined the older I get. The love I felt for the ornate Victorian house I once visited as a child has been supplanted for a love of the latest Japandi craze – a cross of Japanese and Scandinavian design. The same thing is happening in my garden. The double-flowered heavy-headed blooms of some plants feel too ostentatious for these times. The pendulum swings back to the simple, and spring should always be uncluttered. 

This little beauty is hardy as hell, and can be invasive and pesky, but when it’s this early in the season – a season that has stalled in rain and cold – I appreciate its color and stalwart power, its insistence on blooming through the gloom. The white and violet version of these flowers are much more ubiquitous, so this pure violet version of the violet is simplicity and grandeur at once. 

Looking around the internet for another song about violets (it’s mostly just ‘Violets For Your Furs’ – a grand song, but surely there were others?) I ended up finding this deep Enya cut, which the singer expounds upon in the notes for the album below. I like the sentiment, and I love when someone does the writing for me once in a while. 

The lyrics for Sumiregusa were inspired by a Hokku, or Haiku, written by the Japanese poet, Basho, while he was traveling to Otsu.

He says that on his way through the mountain road the sight of a wild violet touched his heart.

We have all been moved by the beauty of nature, so I am sure we can all relate to those seventeen syllables that Basho wrote. We have all had a moment that pulls at our heartstrings. One such moment for me was when I was walking in the woodlands and I came across an old, broken, dying thistle. He was such a sad sight. There was a small history in him that would soon be lost. And yet he struggled on. I called him Don Quixote. I went every day to see him until he wasn’t there any more. The following year his children bloomed, he did not return. Even today, although that place has been taken over by the ever vigorous bramble, and there are no signs of any thistles, I still pass by and remember him.

Perhaps these moments are an epiphany.

Perhaps it is our own acceptance of the world and the way it is.

Perhaps it is a celebration of life, or just a moment that is ours alone. In Sumiregusa all of nature is equal in its power to inspire, to move, to touch – from a small pebble to a great mountain, from one green leaf to the many colours of autumn, from the song of birds to a purple flower.
NOTES BY ROMA RYAN

This year something happened to our previously-majestic Kwanzan cherry. After last year’s boffo-bloom, this season there was literally one single bloom on the entire tree. I noticed all the other Kwanzan cherries were bereft of blooms as well, indicating that some climate event had diminished the blossoms. There may have been a stretch of late cold weather that killed off the flower buds – that does happen sometimes. Or maybe it’s simply an off year for them, similar to the way lilacs occasionally take a year off from heavy blooming. 

Instead, we look to the hothouse blooms to cheer our chilly days. Warmth in hue, warmth in the greenhouse. And soon, warmth in the outside. Have faith.

I happened to catch a photo of Longwood Gardens on FaceBook the other day, and it inspired notions of making a pilgrimage to Pennsylvania next winter or spring to find my long-sought-after dream plant, the Blue Himalayan Poppy (Meconopsis).

The quest to see a specimen of Meconopsis has been quietly burning for years, inspired by a book on finding the elusive Shangri-la in Tibet. After realizing that flying to the Himalayan mountains just to see a blue poppy was perhaps too crazy and extreme even for me, I did a little research and found that there were several stands of blue poppies growing in Canada. That was still about ten hours away, and the blooming period ranged from anytime in July to August- and if I happened to miss it, it wasn’t  another trip we could easily make the following weekend.

When I looked on the website for Longwood Gardens, however, I saw that they had a featured list of plants in bloom according to date – and one of them was the Himalayan blue poppy. You cannot imagine my excitement when I realized this dream was within a few hours’ grasp.

Would I travel the world just to find a flower? I would do more than that, and love every moment of it. The mind can travel without setting foot in a car or a plane, and seeking the Himalayan blue poppy had taken me around the world ~ now it’s time for the eye to travel, to seek beauty in the land of Penn’s woods… Sometimes one need not look any further than one’s own backyard. (Or at least a neighboring state.)

These Lilliputian flowers were on display at a nearby nursery, bravely standing up to the chilly air and rain rolling through the area, and doing their best to give cheery countenance to onlookers such as myself. Like pansies, these beauties make for a lovely start to the season, though I don’t dare indulge in planting anything until a few more weeks pass and we are past the frost-free date (usually the first week of May in these parts). Still, I enjoy seeing them elsewhere, and I’m giving a couple to you in this post. 

This bouquet was created last month, when we needed a jump-start on spring, so rather than May flowers, any April showers will bring these March flowers back to mind. I spent all my words on last night’s post, so this is going to be mostly visuals. Make your own story to go with them. 

As the full moon begins its April rise this week (a Pink Moon no less) we are going to need all the help and calming efforts we can muster. That means checking in with our friends and family, even if it’s just to say hello. You never truly know what another person is going through, and by the time stress and tension and problems outwardly show, who knows what damage has already occurred? Most people aren’t strong enough to show their vulnerable times of need, or ask for help when they require it. I understand such reticence, and so I reach out to people even, and especially, when I haven’t heard from them in a while. 

That’s why I’m posting these cheerful Gerbera daisies – a little gift for you or anyone who needs a little boost, a little check-in, a little message that someone is thinking of you. 

This powerhouse of an orchid has been in bloom since January 30 – that’s six weeks of this beauty going strong – longer than any other bouquet I could have purchased. Best of all, this marks its second blooming cycle with us, so double that number for the real flower power at work here. I thought I’d give an update, as no one has asked, because that’s what I do.

It’s just beginning to show some browning at the edges of some blooms, but this has held up remarkably well. I’ve been upping the humidity to prolong the blooms for as long as possible, and it seems to have helped. We will likely get a good two months of bloom, which is unprecedented in this house, where paperwhites and butterfly amaryllis and the odd Christmas/Easter/4th-of-July cactus are all that provide brief and unpredictable floral exhibitions. 

The time for spring flowers is peeking around the corner, beckoning with every warm breeze, then backing away with threats of snow and ice. The only safe way to handle it is to find a bouquet of market flowers, and let the outside sort itself out as the backdrop to all of the blooms. 

Here we have a casual bouquet of white and yellow tulips, bending and curving in their whimsical, slightly wayward design. It defies rigid order and traditional bouquet rules, but rules are for fools, and tulips are for tricksters. 

That’s all I got in me for today. Visit this post from the past for something more meaningful. 

One of the first orchids I ever had as a boy was a Dendrobium – it was the typical purple/fuschia version that sprays its blooms in arching form like some glorious surreal fountain. It sent up its segmented stalks accented with thick green leaves and loved the extra water in the air that a humidifier provided, but never received the care required to rebloom. Since then, the Dendrobium was a plant I admired from a distance, and never enough to try at home. 

When preparing for a visit from friends last year, I needed a bouquet and found this unlabeled orchid at Fresh Market. Intending only to have it for a few weeks and then bring it outside for a farewell summer, I ended up leaving it on the front windowsill, which gets the most light, and then forgetting about it. 

As the universe tends to go in matters of gardening and flower culture, a little sign of hope and fight appeared as a tiny mode swelled and expanded into an offshoot near the end of an otherwise-bare stalk. Taking that as a sign, I nudged the humidity up a bit and began fertilizing the little guy, eventually repotting it from its plastic home into a prettier glazed ceramic orchid pot. 

Every two weeks or so I gave it a healthy dose of fertilizer, and for a year it showed bits of new growth. This winter, it began to exhibit a few bumps, and while I first thought they might be more offshoots, I was pleasantly surprised to see them develop into flower buds. 

As this mystery variety was unmarked, I looked online and the closest I can guess is that it’s a variety of Dendrobium nobile. The blooms have been going strong as pictured for a few weeks now – far longer than any cut flower bouquet could ever muster. The surprise for me was their fragrance: light and elusive, it’s not always present. More maddening, there doesn’t seem to be a specific time when it’s more pronounced, the way some flowers emit their most powerful fragrance at night or in the morning. I still can’t get a read on when this one is at its most potent, so it remains a lovely guessing game.

The perfume is lovely – slightly similar to the almost-ethereal fragrance of the hosta – the faintest notion of a lily, which is what most of us say about any bloom. 

The majority of our houseplants do not flower (save for this wildly unpredictable cactus) so I am treasuring this moment, and this orchid, and doing my best to keep it happy. 

Putting Miley Cyrus and her empowering ‘Flowers’ song aside for the moment, these roses were a gift to my husband for a good deed he recently did. It’s always risky buying flowers in the days leading up to Valentine’s Day, and we certainly don’t exchange roses on that jacked-up floral holiday, but Whole Market finally had a deal that I could use with my Amazon Prime membership which had two dozen boffo-big roses on sale for $34.99. That’s a steal on an average day in June when roses are tumbling off the trellises. Finding them a few days prior to the day of love was a moment ripe for the picking, or purchasing. 

A vase of flowers does wonders for the soul, and I always forget that until a few weeks pass without them. They are a luxury item in the winter, but some luxuries are worth the cost, especially if they result in such joy. 

(And as Miley proclaims, it’s absolutely fine to buy yourself flowers, which is what I usually do. These just happen to be for Andy.)

My Mom’s friend Diane grew African violets. She had a shelf of them in the small kitchen of her Guilderland apartment. I was only there once, but the colorful violets left an impression that has remained for forty years. Diane was also the person who taught me how to force paper white narcissus bulbs – a lesson I pestered her to repeat at least three times on a trip we took to Cape Cod. She passed away many years ago, but her stories of flowers have stayed in my memory bank, and I’m passing them on here because I was recently struck by the beauty of these African violet blooms.

For all their occasionally-reputed ease of indoor cultivation, and willingness to bloom on a regular basis, I’ve never grown them, but Faddegon’s just got a new shipment of them and they may be too pretty to resist. Like certain other passions, the obsession for certain plants and flowers is a cyclical thing, ebbing and flowing as the universe designs. Finding my way back to the African violet may be one of the things that gets me through this winter – like nail polish or chess. 

Is it strange that the freshest green of the season is to be found in the flower rather than leaves of this amaryllis? If so, it’s a strangeness that is as gorgeous and beautiful as it is mind-pondering. It’s taken me many years to find the exquisite beauty of cream and light green flowers – for so Lon I considered them a waste of floral splendor. What’s the point of putting all your time and effort into a bloom that is the same color as a leaf? I’ve spent the last few years making up for that error, indulging in bouquets that are monochromatically cream and green, as gentle and easy on the eyes as they are simple to assemble. Sometimes a single bloom, when it’s as spectacular as this amaryllis, is all that you need. 

Our home is due for another bouquet, to stave off the winter, to make the days bearable. 

Whenever I see someone purchasing an orchid in full bloom from the market I wonder at what will become of it. I know most people will use them as an extended bouquet of flowers, and once they’ve finished their show they will be discarded, or perhaps stuffed into some corner for a long and slow demise. I don’t have the heart to do that, so I usually don’t bother with bringing one into our home.

About a year ago, however, we had guests visiting for a weekend, and I needed something for the bathroom. There weren’t any great cut-flower selections, but there was a smaller-statured orchid in glorious full bloom. At a reasonable price for its small size, I chose that and let it entertain the guests for their stay. After the blooms faded, I moved it to the front window of the living room, where it would get the most light. (Most people make the mistake of not giving their orchids enough light after their blooming cycle is done – that’s if they care enough to even try to take proper care of them.) It remained there, and as the winter continued, I added a little fertilizer and additional humidity so it might be happy. 

One of its bare stalks began swelling, and soon a little sport appeared, sending out a wavy nest of roots. I let it stay there until it grew a bit bigger. The months passed, and after it seemed to be acclimated to its window perch, I repotted it into a new pot and some bark, continuing with the fertilizing and increased humidity. 

A few weeks ago, I noticed three little bumps appearing on the main stem of the plant, and I assumed they were roots embracing their humid surroundings. I watched as they swelled a bit, daring to hope that they might be more than roots, and as they grew longer and developed into something more, I realized they were indeed flower buds. 

I’m not getting too invested just yet, as I’ve seen buds drop off with a wayward draft or changed watering schedule and I just don’t think my heart could handle seeing that happen, so I’ll contain my excitement to a reasonable level, while still embracing a little bit of hope. 

As for what variety or orchid this is, I cannot say. It was not marked with a name and so it remains a mystery until some plant expert can give a positive ID. Until then, it is a spark of green life and gratitude in the middle of a bleak winter.