Down the Garden Path

And the long view

Tulipomania

It's hard to resist posting these portraits of tulips this time of the year. So here they are.

And, no, for once I will not name them.

I'm just going to let them be

What they are



Who they are.

Purple Fritillaries

The purple version of the Fritillaria mileagris looks as if an artist took a fine sable paintbrush and meticulously dabbed dark and light grape-colored gingham checks onto the flower petals. As might be expected, one of its common names is the checkered lily. There is a white variety as well, quite as dainty - though I can't help but have a special fondness for the checkerboard patterned ones which, after all, lends its latinate meaning to the word "fritillary."


There is another purple fritillary, the statuesque Fritillaria persica - native to Turkey - from whence many of the bulbous flowers (a prime example being the tulip) seem to have hailed. F. persica lords it over many of the shorter bulbs blooming at this time of the spring season. The flower begins the season as a stack of tiny white seed beads, each row lengthening into buds gradually fattening into nuggets of grapes, finally unfurling into a stalk of clustered alternating bells heads above the rest.



And if you're naughty and look up their purple skirts, you will see the chromium orange stamens and pistils peering back at you impassively. And they will not fritter nor twitter nor flutter. Those Queen of the Night petals wear their regal raiment with suitable gravitas.



Damn your impertinence. So, there!

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.