Category Archives: Flowers

Romanticizing this heat is an indulgence as it’s still rather new. Should it persist into August, we won’t have such a kind view of it. With rain due later in the week, let’s embrace the sun, and find ways to find coolness, such as in the hues of these blue and violet flowers.

The simplest way to combat the heat – or at least to attempt tolerating it – is to slow down. This is not the time to exert yourself with activity or frenzied motion. The common trio of ‘calm, cool and collected’ hasn’t lasted for its inaccuracy – each feeds into the other.

I will bring that energy into the office for the next few days, because with intention comes reaction.

So much of summer wants to shout and scream and jump up and down.

The quiet parts are what keep us cool.

What is that bright blaring thing in the sky? 

It’s the sun! 

Where in fuck have you been?!?

{Excitedly checks the weather app after shutting the shit down on the 29th consecutive weekend of rain… and sees the upcoming weekend set for… more rain.}

Before that next weekend of rain arrives, let’s have our sun and eat it too.

A few miscellaneous flower shots from our recent trip to Maine, and now I’m heading into the light… for the moment…

We begin within the hairy bloom of the foxglove plant, speckled with dark blood-red markings as accentuated by a pale surrounding aura of creamy white. It demands that we peer closer, lean in, and probe more deeply into its mystery and beauty. This is what I so adore about flowers – the tease, the flirtation, the invitation, and the seduction. More happens in the garden than most people realize, and I pity those who miss it because they are no longer thrilled by natural and simple beauty. 

There are stories and fables and fairy tales that gave the foxglove its common name, and sometimes writing them out or explaining them in great detail ruins the magic inherent in a name. We may have lost an appreciation of such nuance, such subtlety, and maybe we need to stop speaking so much to return to that state of gratitude. 

Last fall we had a crazy warm spell that brought out many lilac blooms long before they should have come out – and when you spend your lilacs blooms in the fall, you don’t get many in the spring. While others delighted in the unconventional blooming of the lilacs in the fall, I mourned and complained, because I knew what we were going to be giving up. And here we fucking are. 

This is the lone lilac bloom on our hybridized lilac shrub. In honesty, while others enjoyed a fall bloom, ours didn’t bother. Sadly, our trees tend to take a year off of blooming now and then, so ours joined with the others experiencing a lackluster bloom cycle. No matter, it makes this single stem all the more cherished and glorious – and it only takes one to fill a room with happy spring memories. 

Original settled by the Dutch, Albany retains echoes of its roots every year when the tulips bloom. This has been an exceptionally strong showing for the famous, and occasionally infamous, spring bulb. On a recent and rainy lunch break, I found these beautiful beds in full bloom along my downtown Albany walk. 

The air around here was perfumed with the spicy sweet scent of the standard tulip flower – something that I have yet to encounter in a successful perfume version of this elusive fragrance.

Tulips provide one of my happiest memories of childhood, and reading, and flowers. To this day, their aroma brings be back to the library, back to the Dutch tulip craze, back to a childhood where my love of gardening and books was borne in one beautiful fell swoop. 

Our Kwanzan cherry tree has been especially floriferous this year. That isn’t always the case, so we cherish these years because the next one might be a bust. With the rain and wind we’ve had, it’s been a shorter show than usual, and their beauty is all the more precious for their fleeting nature. 

The petals perform a number of shows – starting with their celebrated turn on the tree itself. If there is rain, they will droop downward, dangling and twirling in the wind like little ballerinas, and if there is wind they will let their finery fall. This is the second show – the fall of the petals – graceful and delicate, even in the wildest of storms.

The third and final show is the petals and the pink carpet created whoever they land. In our case, much of this last display is in the pool, where they swirl and form little pink islands of prettiness. A bit pesky for those who must scoop them out, but pretty doesn’t often come without a price. And the peace such a scene affords more than makes up for a little extra work. 

A favorite month for some of us, May begins in beautiful fashion, donning this floriferous coat of cherry blossoms amid wind and impending rain. Andy accurately summed up the scene by simply proclaiming that everything was blooming at once after weeks of stalled spring weather. It waited for so long, and now the petals are already falling away – the beauty lasts but a few scant days. 

On this first day of May, I’m already afraid of how quickly it seems to be moving, and making motions to slow it as much as possible. I haven’t quite figured out how to successfully slow time like that – as much as I attempt to be mindful, to be fully present in the moment, to look around and pause and contemplate, making a memory, as best as I can, even as I feel the new memories disappearing as soon as they’re made. 

And then I set some of it down in words, leaving them scattered here, who knows for how long, who knows for who to read, and maybe it lasts, and maybe it doesn’t. 

The jaunty jonquil, sign-bearer of spring in beauty and delicate fragrance, has heralded the arrival of slightly warmer weather. It looks up at the sun, seemingly as thankful as we are for its warmth and light. It also shudders in the wind, shivering the way we might when the sun hides behind the plentiful clouds. 

On the morning these photos were taken, the sun was out and about, and the day looked to be kind. Spring sometimes starts in fits and spurts, and we accept the sun as it comes. 

These are happy sights, worth slowing down and taking a moment to appreciate. To savor. To get down on the ground beside them and bring your nose to their wispy perfume. 

A reminder of what matters.

And that none of it lasts forever. 

Andy has been chomping at the proverbial bit to get the pool open but the weather has not been cooperating for an early season. I’m cooling myself with glimpses at the spring bulb blooms that have been populating markets the past few weeks. It will have to do for now. 

Even the most careful and fastidious among us can lose a bloom in the course of arranging a flower bouquet. When that happens, rather than toss it into the garbage, I’ll seek out a shallow bowl or dish on which to display the bloom. My heart always bleeds a bit for those wayward flowers that get beheaded before they have time to fully open up. 

Here, a chrysanthemum flower – architectural stunner on its own, even bereft of stem – forms its own little bouquet, and at a perfect scope for a dinner party where no one wants to talk over or around a pesky arrangement. 

The happy visage of bright yellow jonquils has arrived in the local markets – a sure sign of spring on the not-too-distant horizon. With temperatures soaring into the 40’s, perhaps we are finally headed away from this frozen winter. It’s been a long and trying one, with nary a thaw or break in its icy edge. And of course it’s not quite over.

Seeing us through the final weeks of cold and ice, these Narcissus blooms remind of cheerful vanity, string their poses and emitting their fine delicate fragrance. Tom Ford once tried to capture this delicious aroma, and failed miserably. 

They won’t be caught and trapped in a bottle.

We are but one month away from spring, meaning there is only one more month left of winter. Getting two-thirds of a way through something means the end is in sight – distant sight perhaps, but in sight nonetheless. That said, in the case of winter it’s always this last trudge that feels the bleakest and most difficult. Nerves are frayed, patience is at an end, and even the magic of a snowstorm doesn’t seem so magical when you’ve already done it as much as we have this past year. I find ways of coping in splurging on a bouquet of fresh flowers, then watching as the light shifts during the day, illuminating different hues and colors as the hours tick by. I won’t disturb your viewing pleasure with these pesky words any longer. 

“We don’t ask a flower any special reason for its existence. We just look at it and are able to accept it as being something different for ourselves.” ~ Gwendolyn Brooks

The winter blues are best dispelled through strategic use of candlelight, flowers and an invitation to friends for an informal dinner party. Freshly-inspired by my very first viewing of ‘Babette’s Feast’ I am currently all about a fancy dinner – mostly just in the way of candlelight, because Andy will be crafting a simple Italian meal of basic staples for tonight’s festivities, and I’ve already indicated on the invitation that dress is entirely casual.

“You’re only here for a short visit. Don’t hurry, don’t worry. And be sure to smell the flowers along the way.” ~ Walter Hagen

We do have some crystal stemware that Andy had from before I ever knew him, which sparkles majestically in candlelight, and some small bouquets of pink anemone and purple freesia (all due apologies to Miranda Priestley for the latter) to brighten the winter evening. As with most dinner parties, atmosphere and cutlery and outfits are always less important than guest selection, and with Sherri, Skip, Maria and Kato, it’s already a happy success.

“I’d rather have roses on my table than diamonds on my neck.” ~ Emma Goldman