They follow right on the heels of the snowdrops: those cheery little faces, spreading through flowerbeds in bright stripes of purple and gold and white, lifting their faces to the morning sun.
Like the snowdrops, I read about them in The Secret Garden; learned to look for them in Oxford; and truly fell in love with them during my years at Harvard. There was (is) a house with a purple door right across the street from my beloved Darwin’s, and the first crocuses always bloom there, in a triangular bed at the end of the driveway. They bloom all over that part of Cambridge, of course, but that yard is where I go every spring, checking to see if the green sprouts are poking up yet, through the grit and mulch and winter leaf litter.
Sometimes they bud when it’s still snowing out; some years they wait a little longer to emerge. But always, always, they arrive eventually, heralding the end of winter’s gray cold and biting winds. They are the first shot of true color to emerge after the snow, and that jolt of purple and gold goes straight to my heart, every year.
Hello, friends. It’s (suddenly) May, and the world is in bloom – the apple blossoms, lilacs and my beloved tulips are splashing out with color these days. I’m feeling the need for a new writing series, so this month I’ll be sharing with you reflections on – what else? – the flowers I love.
I’ve always been a flower fiend, though as a little girl, I didn’t see a lot of the flowers I regularly see here in New England. We had a daylily bed out back (until our rabbit, Barney, ate them all), and I regularly saw dandelions and other wildflowers, but the vegetation in West Texas is wildly (ha) different from where I live now.
My mother has red yucca and oleander in her yard, these days, and I remember puffball begonia plants and potted geraniums in front of our house in Dallas. But the flowers I read about in storybooks mostly remained just that. West Texas is too dry for lilacs and hydrangeas, crocuses and magnolias, and the only zinnias and gladioli I knew were the ones in my Neno’s garden in Ohio.
One of the beautiful, consistent gifts of living in Boston is watching the cycle of flowers as the seasons change. Again: we have seasons in West Texas, but they’re drastically different (and much dustier, mostly) than the ones here in New England. The earliest spring flowers, especially, are dear to me not only for themselves, but as signals that the winter is finally over. The green shoots signal warmer air, longer days, the emergence of people and activities from winter hibernation. And the first ones out – sometimes poking up through literal snow – are, fittingly, the snowdrops.
I first read about snowdrops in The Secret Garden, when Ben Weatherstaff teaches Mary about the plants she’ll see emerging in the Yorkshire spring. I didn’t know what they looked like, though I assumed they’d be white. I didn’t quite understand that some flowers could sprout, even bloom, when it was still cold out. (In my hometown, where the temperature swings can be wild, and spring arrives in mid-March, it doesn’t quite work like that.)
I don’t think I saw snowdrops with my own eyes until my first spring in Oxford, as a college student. There, as here, you can find them in flowerbeds and gardens, often the first reliable sign of green after the winter rains. I was amazed to see them blooming before spring had truly started, in University Parks and in front gardens behind low stone walls. They were a delightful surprise that first year, and every year I have lived in Boston, they have proved a reliable harbinger.
When I worked in Cambridge, I learned to watch for signs of spring: the crocuses in the yard of the house across the street from Darwin’s; the bulbs in front of the yellow house on Hilliard Street; the daffodils along the Charles River, and later the lilacs in front of Longfellow House. I learned, too, to watch for snowdrops there: even in the bitterest winters, they start popping up all over Cambridge in February and early March. They’re often struggling up through mulch and snow and leaf litter, but they are determined. Touched by weak early-spring sunshine, they break through and ring their tiny bells to herald winter’s end.
Only now, in spring, can the place be named: tulip poplar, daffodil, crab apple, dogwood, budding pink-green, white-green, yellow on my knowing. All winter I was lost. Fall, I found myself here, with no texture my fingers know. Then, worse, the white longing that downed us deep three months. No flower heat. That was winter. But now, in spring, the buds flock our trees. Ten million exquisite buds, tiny and loud, flaring their petalled wings, bellowing from ashen branches vibrant keys, the chords of spring’s triumph: fisted heart, dogwood; grail, poplar; wine spray, crab apple. The song is drink, is color. Come. Now. Taste.
I recently read Dungy’s wonderful memoir, Soil (coming in May), which explores her experience of tending and diversifying her Colorado garden. I’m less familiar with her poetry, but loved this one – you can read the full poem at the Poetry Foundation website.
April is National Poetry Month, and I am sharing poetry – with an emphasis on women – on Fridays this month, as I do every year.
There you are this cold day boiling the water on the stove pouring the herbs into the pot hawthorn, rose; buying the tulips & looking at them, holding your heart in your hands at the table saying please, please to nobody else here in the kitchen with you. How hard, how heavy this all is. How beautiful, these things you do, in case they help, these things you do which, although you haven’t said it yet, say that you want to live.
My friend Roxani – who finds the best poems – shared this one on Twitter recently.
Tomorrow kicks off National Poetry Month, and I’ll be sharing poetry on Fridays here, as I do each year.
I love the quiet daily-ness of this poem, and that last line is tremendous. I hope you enjoy.
We are having (I keep saying) a grey winter around here. A friend exclaimed last week, “Oh, you’re having such nice weather in Boston!” and I laughed out loud – clearly I’ve only been posting on Instagram on the (rare) days the skies are blue.
In the wake of last week’s snow/sleet/rainstorm, I’m looking for scraps of color – which, at the moment, looks like cheery hits of pink, wherever I can find them.
Whether it’s flipping through old flower photos (above), the pink parrot tulips I bought from my beloved florist recently, or my cozy new sweatshirt, pink is making me happy these days.
I’m waiting for the cherry blossoms and redbuds to spring forth (and loving the photos my friends send me in the meantime); dotting my journal entries with bright, spring-hued stickers; and generally searching for pops of pink (and other colors) to counteract the grey. I’m even sporting pink eyeshadow once in a while – anything to brighten my inner (and outer) landscape.
It has been a strange winter: we’ve had (knock on wood) hardly any snow, at least by normal Boston standards. We had the cloudiest January on record and a bitter cold snap in early February (which, thankfully, I missed because I was in California).
It’s felt a bit odd not to step around piles of slush, and I’m getting a little worried about what this unusual winter might mean for the rest of this year. I struggle with snow and cold and ice, but I know the plants and the ground need it to give us the other beautiful New England seasons I love.
But. I spotted the first purple crocus in our community garden the other day, pushing up through mulch and sticks and a few bits of discarded litter. And it gave me the same heart-leap of joy and hope as every year: no matter what, no matter the grey skies and existential crises and chilly nights with or without snow, spring will still come. It’s a relief and a blessing to know that the promise is kept: that underground, where we can’t yet see it, growth is happening. Color and joy, and new life, are on their way.
Hello, friends. It’s technically the halfway point of winter, though we in the Northeast know we still have weeks to go before spring really comes. No matter what the groundhog says, we can expect biting winds and freezing temps for a while yet.
January was unusually grey – the cloudiest in decades, according to my favorite weather guy. I struggle with short days and bitter nights , and have been feeling a bit uninspired at work and in my own creative practice. So I needed the push, more than usual, to really look at what’s saving my life these days.
Here’s my list – I’d love to hear yours, if you’d like to share:
Clementines. These little bursts of sunshine are my favorite winter fruit. Their sweet-tart zing is just the best, and I love the way the scent lingers on my hands.
We’re a week into the new year, and in typical fashion, it’s chilly (though not as biting as it could be). The blue-sky days are brilliant, and the winterberries are showing off their cheery red, but there’s not a lot of visible growth outside. These days, the growing things I cherish – and a consistent delight – are my profusion of houseplants, a cluster of pots positioned to catch the winter sunlight.
I’ve nurtured a couple of geraniums for years – sometimes red, sometimes pink. Currently I have one of each, and I’m keeping a close eye on them after they got frostbitten during our Christmas cold snap. I’m hoping the southern sunshine will coax them back to thriving before too long. I love their cheery faces and the spicy scent of their leaves.
Across the kitchen, there’s a trio of smaller pots: an African violet sporting purple flowers, a re-sprouting amaryllis, and a purple-and-green striped nanouk plant from Trader Joe’s. Their spot on the waist-high cabinet that serves as a pantry means they catch the afternoon sunlight, and their fresh green growth makes me happy when there’s only brown to be seen outside.
On each kitchen windowsill, I’m starting a paperwhite bulb: my florist sells these around Christmastime, and I always scoop up a few. We are weeks away from crocuses, months away from daffodils and tulips and blossoming cherry trees, but the tall green shoots and sweet-scented white flowers always give me hope that we’ll survive the winter.
I love my houseplants for their inherent beauty, for their promise of new growth in a cold and dark season, for the unruly joy they bring to my (mostly) tidy apartment. New life is messy; growth pokes out an elbow or stretches out a leaf in unexpected places, and I often need the visual reminder. These plants, plus the fresh flowers I buy on the regular, and the fern that sits next to the humidifier, help me look for growth and vitality where I otherwise might not.
What’s delighting you this week? I’d love to hear.
There are asters all over my part of East Boston, peeking out at the bottom of hedgerows and growing thick among the milkweed and mulberry at the end of the greenway.
They were a little late to show up this year. The long, hot summer days lingered, and I wondered if the drought in Massachusetts would fry them on the stem. I was delighted – and relieved – when they showed up in mid-September, in (most of) the usual places. Along with cosmos, morning glories and stubborn late-summer roses, they herald my favorite season: the long golden days of summer-into-fall, the time of year when I was born. This time always feels like a new beginning to me, even as the world begins to prepare for its winter sleep.
I always knew asters were my birth flower: I remember seeing their name alongside sapphire, my birthstone, on those lists of symbols associated with each month. But I didn’t know what they looked like for many years. Like so many of the plants that grow in New England, they don’t grow in West Texas. I read about them in the Anne series and The Secret Garden, but I didn’t encounter them in living color until I was an adult.
These days, their presence – peeking over scrub grass or sticking out of fences – feels like a secret sign. Asters don’t shout, not like bold dahlias or tall sunflowers or creamsicle-orange daylilies. But they are distinctive: purple or white or sometimes hot pink petals, yellow or purple centers, charming nicknames like farewell-summers and Michaelmas daisies. I love that they appear in my season, in my neighborhood, mingling with the other plants as green begins to turn to gold. Their friendly faces feel like a wink, as I run or walk by on my neighborhood rounds: right here, in this moment, I am where I’m supposed to be.
cakes, tea and dreams 