Category Archives: Flowers

The soft hoot of an owl carries on an invisible breeze. A cricket’s chirp is stilled as I step off the terrace and begin the lengthy walk to the woodland garden. Through the wet recesses of the lawn, my steps proceed gingerly, to hesitate and hear, to ensure and safeguard. It is midnight, and though the moonlight garden beckons with small beacons of ghostly white blossoms, the silence is unsettling. Far behind me I hear the cricket resume his nightly revelry. It is night in the garden ~ and night in the world. Deep, dark unforgiving night unfurls its silky tendrils, twining and holding me close to its dimly beating heart.

There is a dark underside to the garden, a hidden world crawling with slugs and snails, alive with rot and decay, and night is the favored time for furtive fungus and the sudden appearance of a swath of mushrooms. All of this is happening as I treat tentatively into the forested garden. Swallowed immediately by the leafy entrance, I enter the midnight menagerie. A lofty wind is rustling through the tops of trees, creating a lift in the atmosphere and drawing my eyes upward to pitch dark night and the canopy of silver-bottomed foliage. What hovers high above my head? Sleeping birds, busy bats, creatures of the summer night ~ the cricket in the distance continues his summer nocturne as the overhead whooshing suddenly ceases.

An aspect of mystery imbues the garden, as well as plants and trees and nature in general ~ floating seed fluffies, upon which little children make wishes ~ suspended dandelion seeds and flying feathers of milkweed pods floating on the breeze ~ these are the things of fanciful enchantment and childhood dreams. And yet it is not time to drift away… not yet. The moonlight garden of white flowers draws me further into the deep recesses of the forest, damp and dark, but beckoning and calling with its fragrant spicy sweetness. Somewhere in the vicinity Oriental lilies are emitting their seductive perfume, a siren song for their pollinators, while a tangled mass of honeysuckle tires a sleepy wayward bee. Tall spires of white foxglove climb into the night air, their bells drooping delicately and weeping for such beauty as a cloud of baby’s breath spills over its bounds, wafting hazily onto the path and brushing quietly against my foot, the mist of tiny blossoms undulating as I pass.

I have reached the end of the woodland path. The overhead breeze returns, clearing the sky of clouds and revealing the bright July moon once more. The white flowers glow again, illuminating my way back towards the house. The garden has taken me in, subdued and seduced me for a moment of midnight, and as I leave it to its secret nocturnal activities, I am ready to sleep. The leaves close in behind me, the flowers nodding in whispered acquiescence, and the moon smiles sleepily upon all.

There is no such thing as a ‘timid gardener’. A greater oxymoron has never been uttered, for timidity has no place in the gardening world. Ours is a world of ruthless lack of compassion, a place of daily holocaust and ritual destruction.

We sever unruly root balls, callously part parent plant from offspring, and mercilessly behead baby seedlings where we have planted too many. A lone hollyhock that has popped up in the front of the border gets an immediate dismissal and a mottled tulip sport is unceremoniously yanked from its moist spring bed. But it is all in the name of love and evolution.

A good gardener cannot afford timidity. Leave the delicate meandering along garden paths to the visiting tourists. Ignorant of such bloody battles, as well they should be, these folk see simple superficial prettiness ~ not the deep, rich beauty that only the toiling, sweating, bug-beating, back-breaking earth work can produce. The hard-won victory over slugs is something they can never appreciate whilst passing carelessly through the floating blossoms of a Japanese iris. They do not see the endless eradication of weeds that we must carry out daily ~ they are not supposed to see such things.

Gardening is often full of similar strategic subterfuge. The unenlightened masses can nibble on their cucumber sandwiches and daintily sip tea with unsullied hands; I’ll keep my shredded fingernails, with dirt so deeply embedded that no file will ever gouge it all out, and the satisfying ache of fingers spent grasping a cultivating claw for hours on end. Give me soiled knees over perfectly-pressed pants any day.

Ours is a greater satisfaction than that which they will ever come to know. It is the appreciation of the garden as an ever-evolving sculpture of our never-ending toil, the behind-the-scenes brutality of keeping rampant runners in check and declaring genocide on the Japanese beetles. It’s not always a pretty process, but the ends more than justify the means, and more often than not the means are pretty enjoyable too.

The rewards of a true gardener are not easily won. Hours of watering and weeding, pruning and planning, mulching and tending may only result in a tiny delphinium stalk or an unproductive crop of vegetables, where excessive foliage yields hardly any fruit. Grand visions of scaling horticultural heights soon fall flat at the feet of compacted clay soil or a waterless, windy summer drought.

Yet we continue undeterred. The plight of a gardener is sometimes a pretty one, and even our mistakes carry with them the promise of unexpected beauty. A happy accidental pairing of peas and a self-sown foxglove offer one another symbiotic protection and complementary good looks ~ the rabbits avoid the deadly Digitalis and in the proves overlook the delicious veggie platter in their midst. A forgotten, late-to-break specimen is overplanted by a new addition, and the merry mistake turns into a delicately intertwined melody rather than an inharmonious duet.

Such are the tender returns of the gardener’s battle. A sun-dusted head of hair and a weather-beaten brow are our daily combat. It is a valiant but beautiful struggle ~ the battle of a gardener.

Every gardener has a heroic plant story ~ a tale of some green trooper that survived humble beginnings or ill treatment to become a prized specimen in the garden. They are our unlikely survivors ~ plants that should have been killed by winter weather, unexpected storms, simple neglect or downright abuse, but instead rally and rebound in the face of adversity. In their weathering of obstacles they somehow become more than mere landscape ornaments. Their endurance and perseverance lends them a well-deserved veteran-like status, a decorated soldier that has been to war and won.

I have a certain fondness for these fighters, the bold and brazen plants who have grappled with the odds and overcome them. A certain respect must be given to the lone bulb that blooms out of hundreds that have long-since died out, a choice peony which returns year after year without any fertilization, or the patch of thyme that withstands foot traffic, drought, and an out-of-control lawn mower.

Each year I grant one plant in my garden an imaginary award for ‘Best Comeback’ ~ given out to the individual who has shown a remarkable turnaround in growth and appearance, or has simply put on a grand show without any sort of special treatment. These become the unexpected joys of the garden, and such pleasant surprises are one of the main draws of gardening, one that keeps me coming back for more. This vague hope in the back of my mind is what propels my hands into the soil, my feet down upon a shovel, and my heart hardening at the loss of a delicate delphinium stalk. No matter how traumatic a plant’s passing is, I am reminded by the sight of past leafy generals to keep pressing onward.

One of these is a clump of golden bearded iris that once again bloomed its head off this past year. I purchased the original plant (and a daylily) at a supermarket during my early gardening days. The following year the daylily flowered and multiplied, but the bearded iris did nothing but send up a few small silver-tinged swords. Undaunted, I moved it to a sunnier, drier location, exposing its small rhizomes and sprinkling some bone meal around it, sure of my reward the next year.

Alas, during the next year the plant seemed no happier, the same measly fan of leaves erect but without flower buds. When it came time to re-arrange the bed, I found myself at a loss for space, and so discarded the poorly-performing iris over the bank behind the house, its root-ball rolling to a stop near the bottom of a pile of grass clippings. Sure of its eventual demise, I forgot about the plant until the next summer.

At that time I was puttering around the backyard when something dramatic caught my eye: the architectural spears of a bearded iris, bravely poking through the rubbish behind the house. Without mulch or winter protection or even proper planting, the iris had fought back hard and won, determined to survive, no matter what the location. Such strength won me over, and I returned it to the bed. The next year it became the prize perennial, three spires of beautiful golden blooms burgeoning skyward without staking.

A similar tale of survival is told by the less traumatic journey of a Variegated Solomon’s seal. Planted lovingly in the woodland garden in a rich mixture of loamy, humus-rich soil, certainly the plant would reward me with grand arching sprays of fragrant bell-like flowers and sumptuous foliage. In its partially-shaded location, it was to be the focal point of the woodland garden, but that first year it steadfastly refused to rise to the occasion, content to remain hidden behind the evergreen foliage of a Christmas fern. I watered it generously, hoping to anchor it with deep strong roots from which more than one variegated frond would rise next year. And the next year all I got was the same little frond, with a total of two miniscule flowers.

Newly-impervious to rushing things, I kept it where it was, having gained a modicum of patience since the bearded iris resurrection. Another year passed, and then another, and still the Solomon’s seal refused to yield more than one spindly stalk. Having learned to deal with such disappointments, I simply changed the focus of the woodland garden, relegating the Solomon’s seal to the background, where I promptly forgot about it for a while. At one point I almost pulled it up, wondering how it came to be there in the first place.

Somehow it sensed its brush with death, for the next year (its fifth in the garden) it sent up five majestic stalks ~ each tall and proud and bearing rows of sweetly-smelling flowers, undulating in the wind, and the variegated foliage brightening its dim corner in all its glory. Of course it stole the show that year, much to the chagrin of the foxgloves I had planted during its slow-growing seasons. It is now a gorgeously grand stand, fighting off encroaching lily-of-the-valley with seemingly no effort.

Such comebacks are not limited to the wilderness of the outdoors. Many a gardener houses a number of chlorophyllous troops indoors ~ a scarred cactus that has lasted through three moves, a ponytail palm that almost succumbed to the family cat, or a dusty orchid that suddenly decides to send up an obscenely beautiful magenta bloom in the midst of an extra-punishing winter.

I know two such houseplants ~ a pair of simple spider plants whose brilliance does not in the least betray the punishment they received during an upstate New York winter. Their owner had gone to Florida for a week, leaving the house under the care of a neglectful friend, who had visited only once, and then briefly enough not to notice the twenty-eight degree temperature of the interior. The furnace had shut down, and for at least two days the house was as cold as the outside air of February. All the plants inside turned brown and wilted, before giving up completely.

Convinced that they were beyond repair, the disheartened owner hastily shoved the two spider plants into the basement, forgetting about them for a few months. When spring arrived, the two pots miraculously sported new growth, despite a complete absence of water and light. He brought them out and began to water and feed them, gently nursing them back from beyond the grave. Once restored to light and warmth and water again, the two plants sprang up, stronger than before, finally extending and lowering their little plantlets and tiny white flowers. To this day they thrive, at last at ease with the presence of an emergency thermostat that prevents the house from going below a certain temperature.

Such is the story of many well-worn friends. There is a reverence that these plants delicately demand, a respect which must begrudgingly be given in light of their resolve and determination to survive. They are the champions of the gardening world ~ our tried and true fighters. That which was once the barely-alive underdog seems to shine that much brighter in its unexpected latent glory. Gardening is quite often a bloody battle, and this is a salute to our valiant heroes.

Growing up on the twisting Zone 5 border of upstate New York, my most magical moments of childhood occurred in the garden, during our warm, sunny summers. The backyard, considered large for a small town, was bordered by tall, ancient pines, great oaks, and middle-aged maples that grappled with one another for sky space. This forested area extended down a steep embankment, where I played as a little boy.

Dad had two vegetable gardens then ~ one in the partially-shaded edge of the woods, where he somehow managed to keep us fully stocked with zucchini summer-round, and a raised bed in full sun, which filled the garage window-sill with ripening tomatoes, and also produced beans, peppers, and the occasional eggplant.

I remember sitting on the lawn as he worked the ground – hoeing and tilling and throwing out random rocks. My brother and I were welcomed to break down any big chunks of compacted soil, and I can still feel the way those balls of earth crumbled to a satisfying, feathery powder between my small grinding hands. It was fun to pulverize the dirt like that, unless it was windy – then a surprise gust might throw the falling particles back in my eyes. These were the great inconveniences of the moment; bugs, heat, and boredom would not bother me until years later.

As Dad finished his vegetable planting ~ the last tomato plant buried sideways up to its neck ~ he closed the self-made fencing. This was a five-foot-high wall of metal netting, held up by steel stakes at various intervals and meant to deter rabbits and other herbivores from feasting on our family’s summer crop. Despite its seemingly frail construction (my brother and I bounced against it like it was a vertical trampoline) it worked: we never lost one tomato or bean.

The vegetable plot neatly planted and watered, my attention turned elsewhere when the pool was opened. Splashing the mid-day away as Mom sat by reading a book, I made brief excursions to the cool shady edge of the woodland, where a semi-wild patch of rhubarb and bleeding hearts made an unlikely, yet happy, marriage.

The delicate hearts on drooping stems were little gifts I presented to my Mom with a dramatic bow. Bleeding hearts and rhubarb may sound like an off-match, but it was improbably pleasant ~ the graceful, arching sprays of the quietly-colored bleeding heart and its dainty deeply-cut fern-like foliage was a striking complement to the grand darkly-ruffled umbrella-shaped leaves and thick, deep-maroon stems of the rustic rhubarb.

Mom made rhubarb pie with the harvested stems, and to this day I do not understand how the stems can be edible when the leaves are so poisonous. I didn’t take the chance; rhubarb was never a favorite of mine. I waited until the zucchinis grew long and plump, and Mom made zucchini bread – the shredded squash taking on entirely new meaning as it melted sweetly in my mouth, warm from the oven and completely transformed in its tantalizing mixture of sugars and spices.

After dinners of homegrown vegetables, BLTs, and barbecued burgers, I strolled the path in front of our house. Two rigid, brick-lined borders framed the front entrance, backed by twin euonymous hedges. Rather than conforming to the strict structure suggested by the layout, these beds instead ran riotously free from any proposed order ~ wave upon colorful wave of simply silly annual chaos broke freely onto the brick path.

My favorites were the snapdragons ~ so impossibly sweet of fragrance and so inviting with their velvety tufted lips, that I had to force myself not to eat one. A crazy range of petunias offered another creative outlet ~ I loved dead-heading them, how neatly and easily did they offer spent blooms for clean-up. Marigolds grew freely there as well ~ small bushy clumps of burgundy and orange colliding with tall pom-poms of golden yellow exploding garishly and mimicking the brilliance of the summer sun. As the late-afternoon rays slanted through the colorful bombardment, I walked leisurely along the borders, an ice cream cone melting in one hand and a small haphazard bouquet in the other. These were happy days ~ fleeting days ~ of carefree youth and garden mysticism.

As evening fell, and my childhood dissolved, the gardens seemed to lose their magic. Year after year, the plants seemed less vibrant, less enchanting. I didn’t know then that it wasn’t the garden, it was me. I saw only the dissipating mists of happy illusion, and the dim reality of the world closing in on a little boy’s garden. Insects became an unbearable nuisance, the hot days and beating sun lost their brilliant charm, and the harsh winters killed the vivid annuals and my innocent impressions.

The watering and weeding grew tiresome, the arriving boxes of bulbs became an ugly added chore, put off until the last possible moment when the earth was brutally cold and the first flicker of flurries floated down. I couldn’t see then the imminent arrival of spring, and the new beginning afforded every year.

Back over a dozen years ago, I put out a Project entitled ‘Words of a Gardener’. It was conceived and hatched that winter, as I was finding my way back into gardening. As a written work, it didn’t get the reaction that some of my photo-centric works did, but it remains a favorite of mine. In the revamping of this site, some things had to be excised and left out, and this was, sadly, one of them. I may put it up again in some form, but for now I’m just going to post an excerpt a day from it on the blog. Partly because I’m busy (or lazy, it’s a fine line) and partly because I am simply fiending for a taste of spring and this is the closest thing I can find. Here’s the first story:

Lee Bailey, in his glorious book ‘Country Flowers’ (which taught me more about gardening, and life, than just about anything else), mentioned that he actually got Easter lilies to grow in his garden after being given a pot of them for their namesake holiday. When I planted one out in the garden, it never came back. Yet another example of how Mr. Bailey was a far better man than me. The lilies seen here are the classic Stargazer, as given to us by my friend JoAnn. Their fragrance is far more potent than the Easter lily, and the color clearly more vibrant than the Easter lily’s plain white. In our garden, we have one or two Stargazers that do come back, year after year, but since they’re so ubiquitous I don’t pay them much attention, nor amend their soil as I should. As such, they don’t multiply or put on the greatest show. That’s my failing though, and this year I may rectify that with some well-deserved pampering. Anything that survives the bulb-eating denizens of our back-yard for this long has earned some better treatment.

Since we don’t have any forsythia on our property, I usually force a few branches of the flowering cherry from our backyard. As it needed some major pruning this year, it proved doubly fortuitous. There’s no difficult science involved in forcing spring blooms. Once the buds swell in late winter, I trim a few, put them in a large bucket filled with water, store them in a garage overnight to slowly acclimate them to warmer temps, then bring them in and let nature take its quick-forced course. Some people advise submerging the branches entirely in water for a few hours to re-hydrate them as much as possible, but since we don’t have a bathtub that’s not an option, nor has not doing it ever impeded the blooms from opening.

It is just the thing for a late-showing spring, and since the weather remains so cold and gray, it’s a boon to the spirit. This particular cherry is a single flowered species – a much-simpler version of the flashier hot pink Kwanzan cherries that are everywhere. It is also one of the first to open, bursting into bloom as if in a race with its own fine foliage, and usually beating it. Towards the end of the blooming period, the petals take on the slightest tinge of pink, edged delicately with a darker border ~ an elegant send-off before fluttering to the ground.

This is witch hazel, one of the earliest-blooming spring shrubs. It has a delightfully sweet fragrance, and blooms on bare wood, the effect of which has always struck me as somewhat unfortunate – the blooms having to share space with brown, dead leaves, and the blossoms (already naturally shriveled on their own) always leaving one to wonder whether they’re still alive. Over the years, such an unforgiving stance has softened, and I’ve come to appreciate and admire the stalwart shrub, bravely putting out its perfume when there is still snow on the ground. Seen against a backdrop of blue sky, such a luxury in these earliest of spring days, the blooms are more vivid that I’ve given them credit for, and the entire impression is more effective in the sea of brown that presages the green revolution.

As a gift for Andy in honor of a recent rescue mission, I picked out a bouquet of light pink hyacinths, on the verge of blooming. They’ve lasted for over a week, stretching and filling the family room with their pungent fragrance, always verging just short of cloying, and in close proximity perhaps surpassing such a point. They’re more than welcome at this dire time of the year, especially with some more snow on the horizon, and sometimes just the slightest whiff of a spring bloom makes all the difference. Incidentally, out of all the new Tom Ford Jardin Noir collection of Private Blends, the selection I was most enamored of was the Hyacinth-based one – Ombre de Hyacinth. As a rule, I’m not a fan of floral frags, but this one spoke to me because of my fondness for Spring, and the happy correlation to one of its most delicious scents.

Far more than crocus or snowbells, the flower that symbolizes the arrival of Spring is the daffodil. Those pre-cursors may come first, but they also carry with them the possibility of destruction, by a late-season snow storm, or the muddy arrival of April. True, even the daffodils and tulips have been known to bloom through some late-season snow, but for the most part it’s safer to bloom as a daffodil than as a crocus.

These are, obviously, procured from a market, and not the backyard, as ours is still frozen and covered with snow. But I couldn’t wait a moment longer for a peek of Spring – this Winter has gone on long enough – and when these were in such luscious bud I couldn’t resist. A big bouquet of daffodils will always boost my spirits.

For some reason, I seem to have the most elementary school memories from second grade. I remember each grade distinctly, and the main events from each year, but collectively the most numerous come culled from the second grade class at McNulty School, helmed by one of my favorite teachers, Mrs. Loomis. I remember the folders we got at the start of the year, and if we had a good week of work, she’d give us a sticker to place on the front of the folder. The students with the most stickers at the end of the year got rewarded by getting first pick at a pile of gifts she brought in. (This may have marked the start of my competitive scholastic nature.)

I remember the time we sat around drawing something on the floor, neatly staying within the lines until I messed something up, then letting out an audible “Whoopsie-daisy!” before I even knew what I was saying. For the record, not even second graders say ‘Whoopsie-daisy’ – especially not second-grade boys. But instead of being ashamed or embarrassed, I laughed along with everyone else – we were too young to know real shame, too young to have it mean more than a silly slip-up of language, too young to hate, really.

I remember the doily-festooned brown paper bags we used as Valentine’s Day card receptacles, and how thrilled I felt to watch it fill and get heavier day by day, threatening to fall from its scotch-tape-secured post at the edge of my desk. I remember trying to discern between the collective love of the class and the selective love of a few close friends, but mostly just feeling warm and happy to be part of something.

And I remember a girl named Amanda, who had long stringy hair that she often kept in two pig tails framing her face – a face that was usually stained with something at the edge of her mouth, or unnaturally pink in the cheeks, like she’d been outside on a winter day for too long. She was one of those unremarkable kids in my world – we spoke occasionally, but weren’t friends. I sat next to her at the long lunch table a few times, but she was fidgety, spinning around in her seat, or leaving the edge of her peanut butter and jelly sandwich spilling off its plastic wrap and directly onto the lunch table. (Gross.)

We would never be closer than that. Yet there was one thing that Amanda had that I didn’t. I remember watching her walk down the hill to school one day, so far back that she would surely be late again, and in her hand she held what looked like a few magic wands. Daffodils. It was early spring, and the day was gray and cloudy, but from this mist emerged the girl I’d never much noticed before, holding a small bouquet of flowers for Mrs. Loomis. It was a moment of beauty, and all I could do was watch. They were wrapped in damp paper towels, their green stems so fresh, tinged with the slightest tint of silver , and almost as beautiful as the colors that blossomed on their ends ~ yellow like the purest sun, cream like the thickest egg nog, and orange like the sweetest piece of citrus. Amanda sat down like she had done nothing at all, when she had really changed the world – my little world – full of judgment and criticism and class – all cut through by a simple act of generosity, of goodness, of sharing.

I watched as the daffodils bloomed for the rest of the week, studying how they opened, stealing a sniff when I thought no one was looking, and generally enjoying the preview of spring. Maybe she stole them from a neighbor’s yard, maybe her Mom sent them in, thinking her daughter needed whatever help she could get in the sticker department, or maybe she just felt like Mrs. Loomis would like a few flowers. I’ll never know, but for that one dismal morning in second grade a little girl touched a little boy with a bouquet of daffodils, and he’s never forgotten it.

This beautiful white blossom is from the plant commonly known as the Lenten Rose – but it is also called a Christmas Rose in some parts – which for this season, and for this particular flower – is more apt. I saw this on my last trip to Boston, and swore I heard it crying out on a November night, hanging on to the last bit of warmth from the sidewalk, shrinking into its Brownstone-backed corner, and valiantly putting on its last show in the spotlight of a street lamp. I’m not sure it will still be there when I return to Boston this weekend, but I’ll keep an eye out.