Category Archives: Flowers

For most of my youth, fall signaled nothing but bad things: the start of school, the final days of freedom, and the end of playing outside. As I got older, and a return to school meant less children under shopping foot, I embraced the season. It gets a bad reputation, mostly from the end of it, when it does turn rather dismal, but it starts off in a blaze of flaming glory. Witness these scenes from a recent trip to Faddegon’s – and welcome to fall.

Apples and gourds, pumpkins and squash, mums and asters – this season is alive with color and texture. A feast for the eyes and the nose, and once the cider kicks in the tongue too.

These are the flowers of fall – the Sweet Autumn Clematis and the bluebeard, given supporting ornamentation by the fruit of the Chinese dogwood and the flowering of a grapefruit mint. Some gardeners, myself included, tend to neglect this part of the year, when we should actually be embracing and enjoying each day before the chill begins to settle. Flowers like this remind me of that.

These unassuming little rock plants made their home on the other side of the Charles River, in a park in Charlestown. On the day I passed through, the sun shone brightly in the blue sky – the kind of blue reserved for August and September, and that you never quite see the same way until the end of summer returns again. They softened the circumference of a fountain, where fish spat out water in arching rivulets, and the soothing sound of the splash drowned out any distant traffic. After crossing over from Boston, it was like another world – quieter, more serene, less busy and frantic. Here, there was peace. Here, there was beauty. Here, there was joy. It was a sort of oasis, afforded when the heart was most in need – of what, I could not right off tell, I would only know it when I found it, when it was time for the universe to deliver what had been lacking. Some things cannot be forced, like the blossoms on these tiny plants, which would only be coaxed into bloom by the fullness and the heat of the sun.

The morning glory. One of the simplest plants to grow, and of course it’s one of those that gives me some trouble. Not that it can’t be done, but every now and then there is an off year and they just don’t produce or grow the way I know they can. This year is not one of those years, as many (too many) have re-seeded themselves. (I actually haven’t planted a new batch of seeds in about five years.) I’m partial to the old-fashioned common blue variety (which is one of the elusive ones that has yet to show its face in the garden), but I’ll take these smaller, and more vibrantly-hued hybrids, as a reasonable substitute.

These plants seem to enjoy a simpler, unamended soil – in richer ones they make more leaf growth than flower power – and perhaps that is the reason for their hit-and-miss nature in my own garden. I remember coming upon a large expanse of morning glories covering a chain link fence in Chicago many years ago – and they seemed to be growing out of cracks in the sidewalk and a small patch of dry barren earth. Some things like a challenge, and perform all the better for it.

I know she loathes them, but I happen to adore hydrangeas. Unfortunately, thanks to our soil and climate, we don’t get the gang-buster colors that those grown on Cape Cod are afforded. My pal JoAnn always brings some from her Mom’s garden when she visits, so this past weekend she came up for a small gathering and brought this beautiful bouquet of flowers. They put our pale pink and light blue shades to shame. No matter how much sulphuric acid or rusty nails or coffee grounds you use up here, we can never match the gorgeousness produced on the Cape. And maybe that’s for the best. It makes these moments that much more valuable.

Being that we usually go to Ogunquit in May and October, we don’t get to see the flowers of high summer. On this visit, we did, and they were as lush and vibrant as expected. Our return to the Beautiful Place By the Sea was heralded by this explosion of color and form, and there’s no better way to begin the Ogunquit portion of our vacation than with a selection of those floral fireworks.