Category Archives: Flowers

There is more than pink, yellow, and chartreuse to a Washington spring, and this is a respite of additional prettiness, kicked off by this beautiful Lenten rose, here nodding its flower heads in pretty agreement. Though these plants take a few years to get established (and young ones will indeed take a while before they bloom) they are astoundingly long-lived and reliable. (I’ve had one that has faithfully returned for fourteen years.)

As for the rest, it’s a wonderfully mixed bag – an orchid, some Virginia bluebells, and an American dogwood. Enjoy this pastel entry to the weekend.

We continue our Washington-in-bloom series right where we left off: with the tulip. With their bold color and spicy fragrance, it’s no wonder these magical bulbs fostered such a hysteria in Holland all those years ago. Today, they are mass-bred and quite common, but no less beautiful for it. With such a short season of bloom, and generally such a short life, the tulip is always gone too soon. For that reason, I rarely grow them, but I very much enjoy it when others do.

The only other entry for this brief yellow post is the Trout lily (also commonly known as the dog tooth violet). I’ve pined for this plant since I was a child, captivated by its delicate floating blossoms, yet for some reason I’ve not yet tried my hand with them in the garden. As you can see, they are exquisite beauties, perfect for a woodland garden. It may be time to cast that spell and plant some of my own.

The title of this post is the supposed common-name origin of the daisy. Being that they are JoAnn’s favorite flower, and this weekend’s Boston gathering is for her, I thought it fitting to kick off the festivities with the cheerful bloom. Suzie likes them too, and even I can appreciate their powerful simplicity and happy countenance.

Because of its wildflower status, and lack of refinement in a formal garden setting, the common daisy doesn’t get the same adulation as its more hybridized relatives, but the smaller and less-perfect blooms you find on the roadside carry their own charms. They have nothing to prove, content to exist and bloom beneath the heat of high day, holding their own against the brutal wind of passing cars or the chomping of a deer. Simplicity and endurance are a regular, and regal, pairing.

Behold the glory of the day’s eye.

We always seem to return to where we began. As with so many things in life, I find my first instinct is the one that’s usually right. When dining out and making a selection from a menu, it is said that you should go with your gut feeling and stick to your first choice, no matter what others at the table may say to sway you. When choosing a coat from a choice of three, that first pull toward one is usually the indicator that it’s the one you want. The same holds true for my taste in flowers.

When I was a young boy, I was enchanted by the magnificent over-the-top gaudiness of the orchids and roses that seemed always out of reach. While a neighbor grew some lovely specimens of the latter, I didn’t get to see the former until I was a little older, when I went to work in an orchid greenhouse for one summer. As much as I loved orchids, weeding out hundreds of tiny pots with a pair of tweezers was enough to quell (but not kill) my passion for growing them.

It wasn’t that they were difficult. (I’d gotten a dendrobium to rebloom a year or so before then, a burgeoning collection of Phalaenopsis was flourishing, and a steadfast cattleya could be coaxed and counted on to bloom once a year.) My fiery Auntie Naty grew a large collection of orchids at her New Jersey home, summering them beneath an arbor of wooden slats in the warmer months, then overwintering them in her basement until the sun returned, and her green-thumb touch ran in my father’s blood.

Still, their finicky needs (humidity is a difficult thing to come by in the cold and bitterly dry winters of the northeast) and out-of-bloom leathery-leaved dullness pushed them down on my list of interesting cultivars, and so they fell out of favor until a few years ago, when I found a stunning Oncidium on sale at Trader Joe’s. I brought it home, and its leaves were just as pretty as the shower of bright yellow blooms it produced. Even when they faded, the plant stayed handsome, so I put it in our bay window and forgot about it. A year or so later, I almost missed the new flower spike that was growing at an angle toward the light. I turned the pot to the sun, and my attention to the orchid that I’d never much noticed after its first bloom. Since then, it’s grown healthily and I had to divide it for escaping the confines of its pot.

On a recent trip to Faddegon’s, I once again became enamored of the glorious blooms that were each a story in their own right. Every blossom told a complicated tale of how it came to be, and how it could continue. I remembered what fascinated me all those years ago, and I found myself rediscovering the thrills of such a fascinating genus.

Or a wave of crocuses, as evidenced by these photographs from Boston. With this recent spate of chilly and rainy days, I looked to some happier images to cheer the spirit and nourish the soul. On dark mornings, before we get really rolling into the new season, it’s good to have a colorful reminder of what really matters. To that end, a poem by the magnificent Mary Oliver to go along with the floral harbinger of spring.

Such Singing in the Wild Branches

It was spring
and I finally heard him
among the first leaves –
then I saw him clutching the limb

in an island of shade
with his red-brown feathers
all trim and neat for the new year.
First, I stood still

and thought of nothing.
Then I began to listen.
Then I was filled with gladness –
and that’s when it happened,

when I seemed to float,
to be, myself, a wing or a tree –
and I began to understand
what the bird was saying,

and the sands in the glass
stopped
for a pure white moment
while gravity sprinkled upward

like rain, rising,
and in fact
it became difficult to tell just what it was that was singing –
it was the thrush for sure, but it seemed

not a single thrush, but himself, and all his brothers,
and also the trees around them,
as well as the gliding, long-tailed clouds
in the perfect blue sky – all of them

were singing.
And, of course, so it seemed,
so was I.
Such soft and solemn and perfect music doesn’t last

For more than a few moments.
It’s one of those magical places wise people
like to talk about.
One of the things they say about it, that is true,

is that, once you’ve been there,
you’re there forever.
Listen, everyone has a chance.
Is it spring, is it morning?

Are there trees near you,
and does your own soul need comforting?
Quick, then – open the door and fly on your heavy feet; the song
may already be drifting away.

-Mary Oliver

Apparently we could not escape winter’s wrath, even if it was supposed to end weeks ago, and our most recent snowstorm was one of the worst (which isn’t saying much, except for its late arrival). To counter the ill-feelings from that (and the possible damage to the cherry and lilac buds which were already well on their way to burst) here are a few photos of a pretty pink spring bulb bloom, taken the last time I was in Boston (and before this snowy nonsense).

A late winter storm can be a danger to bulbs like this – but if it’s quick and goes away soon they can usually recover. This last one stayed cold for so long that such a recovery will prove difficult at best.

This gorgeous stand of Lenten Roses can thank a mild winter in Boston for a relatively early, and beautifully bodacious, showing of blooms. They were almost hidden behind a brown patch of shrubs not yet daring to show their green finery this early in the season. I walked around to get some shots with the light behind the petals, as most people simply hurried by on Boylston Street.

On days like this, when guilt and religion and a man dying on the cross all run together in sickly confusion, we need a little balm of beauty. I give you the Lenten Rose.

Like a little burst of sunshine from the muddy earth, the jonquil is a happy sign of spring. Though these are cut flowers from Europe (as many spring bulbs are in the Northeast this early in the season) it still holds the same excitement as those just breaking through the ground outside.

At this point, I’m desperate for all the sun I can get – and if it happens to be in the form of a daffodil, that’s quite all right. It may be even better, as there’s the sweet accompaniment of perfume to go with this kind of sunshine. There are a number of fragrances that attempt to capture the elusive and varied scent of narcissus, but I’ve not found one that accurately conveys it. Some bits of beauty aren’t meant to be bottled, and I’m profoundly tickled that this is one of them. There is a time and a place for the jonquil, and it is because of this small window that we value them all the more.

It is a reminder to celebrate the moment, to live in the here and now, to be fully present and aware of the lush life around us.

All right, enough nonsense. This isn’t the fucking Oprah Winfrey network.

I’m one of those annoyingly anal Virgos who would rather get rid of a bouquet of flowers just as it starts to turn rather than watch it wither away in sad, slow decline. If there’s just one or two blooms that start to go, I’ll simply remove them and let the bouquet go on a few more days, but when they all start dropping petals it’s just too depressing to watch such irrevocable decay.

That practice may have changed when I witnessed the aftermath of this beautiful bunch of tulips. Untouched and unmoved, the natural progression of the life of a flower played out on a granite countertop. I watched with rapt wonder as the petals slowly folded back, as the pollen fell off like powdered sugar, and the pistols and stamens protruded in their own show – the accents of a bloom that don’t always get such a moment to shine.

Hooded by their collapsing petals, the pollen sacs peeked out like little heads of fear and worry. Their protection was about to fall. Their last line of defense was about to tumble. But oh how pretty such degradation could be.

Extremely extended and fully unfurled, the petals yawned and stretched, utterly unaware that they would not fold back when night fell again. Or maybe they did know, and were putting on one final show.

Petals of white go almost translucent as they age, streaked with deterioration. Sprinkled with pollen, they become abstract works of art. Beauty is everywhere if you look hard enough to find it – the universe has insured us of such.

Then, in the stillness of night, the soft clicking of fallen petals echoes the ticking of time.

Little cheers me up as much as a big bouquet of jonquils at the end of winter. With less than a month to go of the wretched season (which hasn’t even been all that bad) I’m starting to get that winter angst anxiety, in which I seek out hints of spring such as these bright blooms. They came from Ireland, and landed in a vat at the local Trader Joe’s. Too delicate to last much beyond a few days, those days are filled with light and the sweet scent of narcissus. It is just enough to keep the spirits going in this final stretch of our winter slumber.

For even more perfumed bang for your buck, seek out some hyacinths. I prefer the potted bulbs as opposed to the cut flowers, and if you’re patient and industrious enough they can be saved and planted outside for a repeat showing next spring. Their fragrance is the personification of early spring – all the hope of the world in a single sniff. I feel it… it’s coming.

Right around this time of the year, my heart starts stirring for something green and colorful, while my nose searches for the perfume that only a flower in full bloom can produce. Supermarket finds of daffodils and hyacinths appease the restless yearning, but they are temporary and fleeting fixes, and the forced nature of their blooming results in an inferior product. Nothing can match the simple majesty of a bulb blossom culled in natural time from the ground up, fed by melting snow and the first warm spring breeze. Still, they are better than nothing, and will have to do until the flower shows start opening in a month or two.

For this featured photo, I present a wall hanging found on a holiday jaunt through Saratoga. In the back of some gift shop, it caught the light and drew all eyes towards its colorful composition in multi-dimensional form. If you can put the dirty snow and smell of cold exhaust from your mind, if you can push away the scent of wet wool and rubber soles drying over radiators, you can picture the fields of flowers that may have inspired this piece.

The beauty of art – even in its simplest and most raw form – is that it can take you out of the depths of winter. On the day before the last day of January, I can’t think of anything more powerful than that.

It’s too early to hear it, and until this week we’ve had no real reason to miss it, but when those icy winds started wailing again, I realized that whatever faint whisper of spring had sounded in my ear was gone. Our traditional January thaw took place for much of the first half of the month, so it would be greedy to expect anything like that now. Despite this, the heart longs for that glorious time of the year when we turn the corner from winter. It’s quite a way off, but today marks one month of winter done. We are a third of the way there, and the days are getting longer.

In celebration of that mini-milestone, here are a few spring-hued flowers that stood pretty sentinel in the lobby of the Taj Hotel on my last visit to Boston. These are parrot tulips, in cream and chartreuse – the simplicity of the color scheme given frilly life by the architectural form of the flower petals. I’ve never grown these myself – they always seemed more suited to cut-flower schemes, and in a yard as limited as ours there is simply no room for such an extravagance. Besides, they’re just the slightest bit too fancy for my taste, which makes them perfectly suited for an elegantly old-school hotel lobby.

The 60-degree weather we’ve had of late is nice, but disturbing. I fear for the buds that have appeared on the cherries and hydrangeas – all will be decimated once the customary winter hits. In the meantime, however, roses still bloom and fall-colored leaves still dangle. There is something fun about that, some way-late-season celebratory spark that accompanies the disorienting notion of roses in December.

These pink beauties were smiling at me from the Southwest Corridor Park the last time I was in Boston. I paused to snap a few photos, while another on-looker marveled at them too. She said they were almost like holiday decorations.

Such extremes are indications of global warming and climate change, so the sight of these beautiful roses comes with certain consternation. As much as I enjoy the reprieve from the cruelty of winter, I also know the importance of a steady frozen groundwork for the survival and well-being of plants in the Northeast. Beauty and relief today may spell disaster for tomorrow. I’d rather go through the ritual and pay the dues now.

That said, these roses are indeed beautiful, and their incongruent appearance in the last month of the year shall be taken as a blessing. Maybe the winter won’t be so bad. Even if it is, the memory of beauty lingers, the feeling resulting from warm sunlight in December remains.