Poetry Friday: An Orphan Flower Story

Happy Poetry Friday! Welcome to the first Poetry Friday of the year. Always good to start a new year off with a little poetic reflection.

Silly, little poem from me today about how a cyclamen came to our house this week.

Cyclamen

My debit card left me secretely.
My yoga studio was blank and dark,
Class cancelled on this icy night.
I tried the next door grocery
Thinking stoically of my
Depleted supply of detergent.
The last cyclamen waved at me
Fluttering there on the display
Curving edges of lipstick petals
And shy, sage-veined leaves.
I tucked her snugly into my coat,
Along with one ripe papaya to
Encourage me in the winter cold.
But at the check-out I found the thing
My debit card had done, a sly jilting.
I thumbed and thumbed through my wallet,
Fumbling while the cyclamen nervously
Fluttered there on the cashier's belt.
Maybe the store manager could see
Botanical fear or loved a rescue.
He put his hand on my flickering ones
And told the cashier to type: store credit
As long as I return by Friday to pay.
And I hugged the damsel in pink to me
Glad that despite betrayal of my plastic card
I had found this fuchsia coquette for comfort.


You can find the other Poetry Friday contributions for today at our host, Matt's blog, Radio, Rythm and Rhyme. Have fun browsing! There are lots of cool posts on the list today!

Poetry Friday: Winter Cherry Cinquain

Happy Poetry Friday! I am sharing a cinqain today, a shorter form but kind of fun for its simplicity and compact succinctness. Yesterday the boys and  I pulled over because I spotted the first blooms of tiny, flowers on the dormant looking branches of a Prunus subhirtella, the winter cherry. It was bitter cold so the boys all stayed bundled in the car while I braved the frosty air, breathing smoky clouds of breath on the branches in the sunlight. I took one tiny blossom into the car and let my four year old hold the tiny bloom up to his eye, examining the minute gold stamens with a smile. This is all in December, in New England...in below freezing temperatures, mind you.

 Last year I noticed the little blossoms in February by chance and went dashing home all full of global warming sadness and googled to see if other people in my area were seeing cherry trees bloom far, far too early.  Instead I met this particular species of cherry and found out that it was happily doing exactly what it was supposed to be doing....blooming "sporadically from autumn until spring." There is a whole row of them there, standing side by side all along the parking lot. This year, knowing they are there now the boys and I will keep enjoying the gradual, gentle show. I do love an unexpected pleasure. 

Winter Sakura

I find
Pale, petals
Fluttering in the chill park
December-time cherry blossoms.
Rosy snow. 

 Alison is hosting Poetry Friday round-up today over on her blog Robin Hood Black. Take a lazy, meander through the offerings and enjoy a little poetry with your Saturday morning tea. I am hoping to get a chance myself, mug in hand, baby on my knee....

December Rose

The boys and I headed out to have a picnic lunch on the playground next door late this morning and this was blooming by the back door. :) Fun to have Botany play little jokes on us from time to time. No reason why we can't have the occasional rose in December. The norm is only what most often happens...not what must be.

Poetry Friday: A Botany Poem

I have been soaking in Amy Merrick's stunning blog An Apple A Day whenever I get a spare minute. Between that, spring being present and spring cleaning addling my brain a bit my thoughts have become quite blossom-soaked. Why fight it? Spring wants to be center-stage...so let her.

Flowers on Dancing Woman (Photo credit: TheArches)

My poem today is all about this very favorite season of mine...and maybe explains a bit of the madness we all feel suddenly at this time of year. May she ever shake her blossomy mane on my street....

Sunlit leaves in spring with and without backlight (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Once A Sensualist Dame...

Spring is doing her passionate tarentella
All down our block and the next one too
Pursing her bold red tulips and fiercely
Kicking up chartruese, grassy spears.
She shakes her tinkling forsythia mane
And drops rings of daffodil at every door.
She lays herself a rosy, blossom rug on
The corner under the lush magnolia tree.
Where she blows a flirty kiss of pear petal
Confetti after every oblivious, passing car.
She winks a forget-me-not eye in each yard,
Reaches her long, leaf-tipped limbs skyward
And performs a saucy, hosta-fringed hip-roll
That always leaves my old house open-doored
Lolling dusty rugs from every window.

Wall painting from Stabiae: Flora with the cornucopia (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

You can find the other Poetry Friday participants contributions over at Book Talk, today's host blog. Feel free to chip in with your own additions too! Participation is open to all....just link up and join the throng.

A Floral Execution

Too much Alice In Wonderland? A did just read it to the boys. This afternoon it was "Off with their heads!" for a whole flock of my sweetest and most unsuspecting daffodils.

That entire left-hand side of the front walk got scalped.

The guilty party. At least he was sorry when caught.

And the consolation prize is fists full of sweet daffodils on the table.

Dragonfly Arranging

Am knee-deep in designing and supplying flowers for a wedding for an acquaintance and having untold amounts of fun (Pictures to follow!) and so my attention is a bit divided at the moment. Tonight is the delicious night when I get to stay up until the wee hours with piles of sweet fern and the open, curling faces of roses for company while the living sculptures take shape. Can't wait to see the bouquet I am making in the hands of the bride! I love doing floral design. Preparing for this wedding A asked me how many weddings I had done now and I did a quick finger-count tally and realized this will be my ninth! Amazing! Know anybody else in need? I will happily do wedding flowers for friends, friends-of-friends and even you! Just drop me a line.

Until then...I am out snipping flowers and greenery and accent bits hither and yon, including but not limited too, my own yard. And I had to share this beautiful jewel of a dragonfly, a huge, glistening Common Green Darner...that was resting on our tomato plants. Wish I could find a way to work him into an arrangement. Isn't he stunning? Can you imagine have one of those front and center on your corsage? Assuming of course that no harm came to said creature and he happily participates in weddings.

Dragonflies are the fastest insects on record, are carnivorous (read: mosquito eating) and absolutely stunning to boot. Someday I am going to catch dragonfly larvae with the boys and raise some to maturity in a little glass bowl in our sunroom. Always wanted to do that...

Peace, love and rose buds,

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Hydrangeas Don't Have To Be Blue

 We're getting to the end of the heady blooming season for most gardens. All that really seems to be left are the hardy, and ever optimistic black-eyed-susans. In our garden the same is true, although some previous owner left us one botanical trump card, two stunning hydrangea trees. They're not really trees...in the classical/botanical sense of things, they're shrubs, but over the years somebody worked hard to prune them into beautiful fountaining tree shapes, and with very little care on my part they're the late-season garden stars.

 I love how amazing it feels to be underneath them, the world barely visible through the emerald umbrella the arching stems. They are perfect little dream-houses, wonderful places to play on hot days when the boys are scheming up a world of secret kingdoms.

The Latin name for these hydrangeas (in case you're interested in hunting one up for your own garden corner) is H. paniculata 'Grandiflora.' I love them for being such lush, spectacle bloomers (check out those blossoms as big as my head in the shots above!), their carefree nature, sweet scent, and the way my honeybees are drunkely stumbling all over themselves to get back and forth from the blooms to their hive. Some of my sources tell me that this hydrangea which is a garden plant over 150 years old is out of vogue, and has been overdone in many gardens. I say, baloney! You can't overdo the classic plants, and the only thing it could do to impress me more would be produce fruit. I'm a wild fan.

 The blossoms are positively humming with visitors, tiny butterflies, shimmering irridescent flies and of course the girls from our hive, I even saw a ladybug there, doubtless eating some less fortunate visitors.

I am thinking about trying to dry some of the blossoms this year and hoping for some kind of artful arrangement. I love the delicate, papery way they can end up, like a million tiny wings. See here, here and here for examples of what I'm dreaming of. I could do that, right?

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Bindweed Beauty

I kinda like weeds. I think it all started when I read for the first time that there is no real, technical definition of a "weed," it's just what we call any plant we don't like. Certain weeds are of course invasive or exotic interlopers who go crazy in their new habitat (kudzu anyone?) and this feels like it gives them special status, but the fact remains that any particular weed some other gardener's "plant."

Yesterday I found myself eying up a sweet little specimen of field bindweed which is an Asian hobo plant, the perennial form of our beloved old fashioned garden annual, morning glory. Isn't it pretty though? The blooms are smaller than a morning glory, just little one inch cups, but so elegant and romantic looking. I am half-tempted (but only half, don't worry!) to dig some up and plant it in the somewhat empty corners of my fledgling flower beds. It twines so sweetly and it looks a bit like a miniature moonvine although it blooms during the day and isn't sweetly scented.

When we were in California their variety was larger, the size of the garden annual morning glory and all pink striped about the throat. So pretty! I tried to paint the above photo after we got home but, with dismal success...I may try again sometime. It was so pretty and they have such wonderful lines.

The Brothers Grimm had a sweet little legend about St. Mary and bindweed which you can read here.
 And this poem by Susan Coolidge, captures exactly what I feel about the little flower.

                  Bindweed

  In the deep shadow of the porch
    A slender bind-weed springs,
    And climbs, like airy acrobat,
    The trellises, and swings
    And dances in the golden sun
    In fairy loops and rings.

    Its cup-shaped blossoms, brimmed with dew,
    Like pearly chalices,
    Hold cooling fountains, to refresh
    The butterflies and bees;
    And humming-birds on vibrant wings
    Hover, to drink at ease.

    And up and down the garden-bed,
    Mid box and thyme and yew,
    And spikes of purple lavender,
    And spikes of larkspur blue,
    The bind-weed tendrils win their way,
    And find a passage through.

    With touches coaxing, delicate,
    And arts that never tire,
    They tie the rose-trees each to each,
    The lilac to the brier,
    Making for graceless things a grace,
    With steady, sweet desire.

    Till near and far the garden growths.
    The sweet, the frail, the rude,
    Draw close, as if with one consent,
    And find each other good,
    Held by the bind-weed's pliant loops,
    In a dear brotherhood.

    Like one fair sister, slender, arch,
    A flower in bloom and poise,
    Gentle and merry and beloved,
    Making no stir or noise,
    But swaying, linking, blessing all
    A family of boys.

I'll stop short of actually planting it in my own garden but, if I do find it has climbed in, I think I'll lean more towards training it and culling it than extermination. How do you resist those little paper thin funnels of white?

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The Magnolia, And It's Guises

When we were in South Carolina last week.....Did I tell you that we went to South Carolina last week? We did. It was wonderful. Charleston is a beautiful town and I liked "The South" more than I thought I would although I'm still quite happy to be a Yankee girl.

We went down to visit my sister Lockbox. Isn't she cute? She's perky and be-curled and tans well and is generally four shades of darling.

Anyhow, all that to say....when we were in South Carolina, I had my first real encounter with the storied Southern Magnolia and I couldn't get over how striking it is. I feel like it's sort of an amazing Lego production...this stunning thing made out of all these curious parts. Check it out:

There's the breathtaking, (and scented I might add) blossoms and shining leaves....

 Then these funny centers that rise up out of the center of each blossom. Trippy, eh?

And the stamens which look exactly like a buch of strike anywhere matches scattered on the ground under the tree. I love the hilarious irony of that look-alike.

And then when the blossom finishes the petals fall and turn this beautiful fawn brown, and they look and feel exactly like suede leather! So crazy! A had to drag his wacky plant geek of a wife away from the tree. I could have looked at it for hours. I love the crazy bits of the outdoors.

Iris Season!

Image via Wikipedia

One of Van Gogh's many iris paintings.

Finally, the tall bearded irises in my backdoor bed are blooming. They opened sometime last night and this morning when we came out the door, there they were, glistening in the morning sunshine. That long wait was totally worth it. Several of these iris rhizomes were rescued from the lawn which had crept into their overly shady bed. I dug them in the middle of a misting spring rain, in the very chill world of mud and drizzle that is the early year. And the incident inspired this Poetry Friday post.

My purple veined iris that came with our house.

I think the irises I was digging and transplanting that day are these lush, purple veined ones, and I think the fluttery lilac one below is a variety I ordered from the excellent folks at Shreiner's Iris Gardens, along with a brilliant butter yellow which I hope is still coming.

If you're looking for some new irises, I heartily recommend them. The only caveat is that you'll get lost drooling over the photos on their web site. If you're a novice gardener, looking for some recommendations, bearded irises are a good pick, they're beautiful, often fragrant, make beautiful cut flowers and given sunshine they are carefree and unfussy. I love them for all these reasons and also for the fact that they are so historically enduring. Irises are one of those flowers that often outlives houses or at least the owners of said houses and will still be bravely blooming every spring, even if their good gardeners have gone on to contribute to the soil themselves. I love a resourceful romantic, even if the romantic is a plant.

Image via Wikipedia

Monet's iris path. Someday, I'll visit.

Next iris task is to paint my own rendition of them, after the great masters of brush and palette. I have in mind to try my hand at this beautiful basket of cut irises for sale that I photographed in a garden France during our trip to Europe in 2008.

I've been thinking about it for years, way before I "could" paint. A and I used to play this game somewhat perpetually called "If I Could Paint" wherein we'd call out to the other person and point when a particularly heart-tugging image hit us and we wished we were able to wield a brush. It still cracks me up to think that suddenly one day, I discovered I could paint...I have years of catch-up ahead of me. That game set me up with a long list of future subjects.

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