Pokey, Again

Portrait of a Turtle

This week's cold snap has sent Pokey the Turtle, our red-eared slider, who lives in the little pond back down under. But she was caught sunning herself quite blatantly on those few warmish days that hit the sixties.

And this year she did not chase me down the garden path on her first day up and about. She was quite sedate.

Bright Parrots at Dinner

Friends arrive for dinner and brought frozen yogurt and sorbet AND a gorgeous bunch of Tulip Bright Parrot. This bouquet captures for me the essence of one of the many joys of life - sharing a meal with friends and loved ones. With the advent of spring, and tulip bulbs in the ground not quite budding yet, Bright Parrot promises so much.


This particular meal consisted of a chicken dish I had adapted from a Mark Bittman New York Times recipe for duck breast, in turn adapted from a traditional Italian stuffed pork dish, Porchetta. The stuffing contained of a mixture of Parmesan cheese, garlic, fennel seeds, fresh rosemary in an olive oil binder. My own trick was to wrap the chicken breast with prosciutto. Sides were mushroom risotto and a fresh fennel and carrot relish. A strawberry chocolate clafouti served with vanilla ice cream topped all this off. And, naturally, coffee and tea.


I considered that winter was being seen off with an appropriately weighty hurrah - to the eye, to the palate, and yes, to the gut.

This is Not Forsythia

I plant witch hazel because I love its delicate fragrance and because it blooms in the winter. Bright sunny yellow threads radiate from dark red calyces, clinging to frozen bare branches, or intermingling with snow laden ones.

In my garden here grow the Chinese witch hazel Hamamelis mollis and the hybrid H. x intermedia 'Primavera.' A third was to have been H. 'Jelena' - the rusty red flowering variety - but instead grew up to be H. 'Pallida' with pale lemon flowers, when it was discovered the year after planting that the nursery had sent the wrong variety.


But no matter.

Red or yellow, some years the witch hazel may start blooming as early as Christmas time. This year it was late January before the thin yellowish streamers began to slowly unfurl, like miniature hatchlings, from cobby ochre buds nestled against the bare branches.


The cold keeps them going. They love it. But it is on warmer days that one truly gets whiffs of the powdery fragrance that brings back the flickery sensations of toddler days apres le bain.



Witch hazel is what keeps me reconciled to chilly March - even cold April days. And then there is the unmistakable addendum of sculpturally ridged leaves which turn gold, orange and red in autumn.



And so, with apologies to forsythia lovers, I will say "there is no comparison."

The Promise of Blue

Iris reticulata, that squat little beauty, pokes itself through the blanket of March snow, having shown up as one of the earliest harbinger of spring, a couple of weeks now. After the rains, more of them show up to stay.


And lo, just a day or so ago, the patch of giant crocuses burst into blue flames.




Meanwhile, throughout this time, the blue jay has been showing up as a noisy undertone to the premise that BLUE heralds spring as much as GREEN.

Landscape with Chair and Bench

A patch of dirt, a place to sit, a structure over one's head. Do these not constitute a garden? Most certainly, I say.

Perhaps it has become a cliche these days to opine that a garden is a state of mind. Yet here it is - an elegant pergola rests partially on a sawhorse and a chair. The chair seems to have been upended for the nonce, but benches sing with the colors of growth, and the scent of earthy mulch twitches the senses. Overhead floods and spots deconstruct into intriguing shadows on the ground.

All this, in the midst of a wintry month, is nothing if not a welcome sight.



Jim Osman's installation is on exhibit at the Brooklyn campus of the Long Island University Humanities Gallery (first floor Humanities Building, gallery hours 9-6,) till the end of February.
http://www.brooklyn.liu.edu/depts/art/pages/humanities_gallery.htm

Name that Plant

One is constantly surprised by what a plant might throw up in one's face. For example, I had no idea what this plant was when I first encountered it over ten years ago.

Later I surmised that my plant was a kelanchoe. Much, much later on, with more information, I concluded it to be K. delagoensis, aka Chandelier Plant, or Mother of Millions, or Mother of Thousands.

I had first discovered its spindly stem crawling out of a cracked seam from the rotting wooden windowsill in my previous studio; there was no dirt, unless one counts dust. I kept a watchful eye over it, though I never took any active caring steps with it. Yet through thick and thin, mostly thin, (and it remained skinny,) my studio companion weathered the years with me. When the time came for me to leave that studio, I understood my unofficial mascot was accompanying me. So, carefully I dislodged the plant from its place in the sun and brought it home - in time, to be potted up and reside in the new greenhouse.

And how did it do in its new abode? See for yourself. Above is a picture of my particular kelanchoe, prayerful, if a bit fangy, in its first year of life in potted soil.

But beware: do not - I repeat - do not let it loose. Those coiners of common names for plants do not jest, all those epithets: mother of thousands, mother of millions. They mean it: really I'd say mother of trillions, mother of gazillions - for once one of those cute wee little clinging babies hits pay dirt, each has no qualm at all about growing up to become...

A MONSTER!

And yet, and yet...
Look again, see what grows on top. One has to, yet again, hand it to the plant-namers:

CHANDELIER PLANT...

A Winter Day's Dream (with Bee)