A Whiff of Spring

With an ice storm last Friday and another coming soon, I couldn’t resist the dazzling yellow daffodils at the grocery; a bunch was only $1.69!  They store them, the sign said, “dry” so that they don’t pop open until the customer is ready.  This made it a lot more convenient to carry them throughout our many errands.  I bought them on Saturday but didn’t put them in water until Sunday afternoon; they were beginning to open but most buds were tight.  By bedtime they were all fully open!  Water, just water brought them to life.

The fragrance is heady as I type a few feet from the glowing trumpeters of spring.   Despite the grey skies and cold temperatures, in here it is spring.

Bad Air Day

With an ozone alert today I couldn’t spend much time gardening but I could bring in some cut flowers for a little bouquet. The purple asters that came in a bouquet I bought at a gourmet grocery had to leave their main stem behind when I changed their water today. Changing flower water daily extends the life of flowers and prevents “bad air” indoors. So to the relocated asters, I added one of my “Becky” rudbeckia flowers, a stem of magenta and white Sweet Williams and some swirling, trailing lettuce flowers. For “greenery” I added some ferny yarrow leaves, leaves from a deep magenta shade plant whose name I didn’t catch and flat-leaved parsley. Oh yes, I cut a peppermint bloom to add to the mix. Using all kinds of things from the garden makes a bouquet more interesting.

Long Awaited!

My pink daylily has bloomed again at last! It hasn’t bloomed in at least five years; though I had wanted to give up on the grassy-leaved plant I persevered. And now my patience has been rewarded! Isn’t it lovely? I’ll bring just the blossom (no stem) in this evening and put it in water to enjoy indoors since it will only last a day, hence its name—daylily.

Prettiest Petunias?

These white-edge fuchsia petunias that have come back for a second round may be the prettiest and healthiest ones I’ve ever grown! The leaves are larger, their cascade is more graceful and they’re blooming profusely. And I haven’t done a thing except water the stumps all winter.

I discovered that they make good cut flowers as well; who would have thought it? I accidentally broke off a branch and joined it with a bouquet I already had; it has lasted several days and is still in good shape.

The More You Pick

My grandmother’s garden was full of flowers but our childish eagerness to pick flowers was curbed by strict instructions, “Don’t pick the flowers,” except the pansies. Pansies were different since, “the more you pick them, the more you have,”(This is true of many annuals and biennials, sort of like pre-deadheading; it stops the plant’s process of seed production).

So now that my pansies have begun blooming again, I’m taking my grandmother’s advice and making more pansies. I’ve put the cut ones in her green glass vase along with a sprig of peppermint—a frost survivor.



The sun eventually broke through the thick morning fog. Welcome sun.

Color on the Rise

The Bradford Pear outside our window seems eager to open its buds! I wish I had taken my camera on our weekend excursions! The flowering crabs are in their full soft red violet array. Entire streets are now lined with the young trees!

We even saw forsythia blooming! My husband says, “Now I know it’s spring when the forsythia blooms.” My grandmother used to talk about the lovely bushes with their four point yellow star-shaped flowers but I never saw one outside of garden catalog photos until we moved east. They’re now some of my favorites. Maybe I should have bought the cheery bouquet of yellow-flowering branches; they would have surely brightened this chilly gray day.

Relieved

As Valentine’s Day approaches I’m again reminded of how glad I am to no longer be working in a flower shop! Do you wonder why flower prices are so much higher for Valentine’s Day? Here’s the primary answer, increased overhead. The growers spend many nights in the greenhouses to make sure their roses are perfect, that the electricity doesn’t go out and turn them into rosecicles or that no other business-killing disaster occurs. Such a huge volume of hothouse flowers additionally takes a greater amount of fuel to keep them warm.

Then comes the extra overtime hours paid to employees, though floral industry employees make very little—I started at $3.50 an hour! We would be on our feet all day and into the night for days. One shop always had a line of flower-buying men trailing out the door and into the parking lot. The shop owner always hired a deputy for traffic direction and set up a TV with ski videos to keep the guys occupied while they waited.

Yes, some of it is marketing hype but most florists are local small businesses (though they’re being overwhelmed by the more ordinary supermarket floral departments) and aren’t we always being urged to support such businesses? Valentine’s Day is one of the make-or-break days in the business.

Nevertheless, I’m over celebrating Valentine’s Day. I’ve concluded that it puts unfair pressure on men to spend more money on gifts when they already have Christmas, birthdays, anniversaries and possibly Mother’s Day to keep up with. A friend once remarked regarding Mother’s Day that she’d rather be treated right all year than get a corsage on Mother’s Day.

But if you still want to buy your lady some flowers for Valentine’s Day, the other women I worked with in flower shops and I always agreed that we would prefer a bouquet of mixed flowers over the routine red roses as more creative. But if your lady is a traditionalist you’d better stick with long stem red roses. See what I mean? It’s too demanding.

Falling from the Sky

Clumps of matted and molted leaves woven through with pine needles and who knows what else fell from the sky accompanied by loud machine buzzing. A large shadow loomed above, just behind the cascade. We had been warned that the gutter cleaners were coming (at last), warned to move our cars and cover our patio furniture to protect them from “falling debris.” But “Chicken Little” need not have worried; the overhang edged by the non-functioning gutters extends well past my garden. As for cars under gutters—highly unlikely.

Not only were these gutter cleaners neat, their timing was impeccable since rain has been falling from the sky since; rain is forecast to be falling every remaining day of the week—even Christmas. But we can make it cozy indoors.

Oskar’s number one bud has burst forth in bloom! Since it’s cool and rainy, the flowers will last longer. If it were sunny, I would put an amaryllis in a cool spot away from direct sun to keep the flowers fresh. The same would be the need for any cut flower; never put cut flowers on top of the TV or any other hot spot if you want them to last.

The Garden Watered by God

It must have rained again last night, then again this morning so the garden didn’t need much watering.

Since it didn’t need much tending otherwise, I cut some flowers and brought them in. I’ve not used pentas as cut flowers before; I’ll see how they do. Maybe they’ll even root (though clear glass containers are better for rooting). I’m enjoying their star shapes. I added some Victoria Blue Salvia, some Parrot Leaf, and peppermint to smell good.

I had time to do another kind of planting today. In day 4 of revival, the angels are rejoicing because another person is added to the family of God. And so am I!