Montecito 9/2011
Artists of all modes and materials as well as botanists, naturalists, and anthropologists have long been fascinated with various stages of the life cycle of plants. We are so lucky to have the renderings spawned by the type of people who are able to sit still for hours at a time and depict a specimen once, let alone through its stages of development and then decay. Their work flows through history like the story that it is, (wo)man’s fascination with physical beauty – aka flower blossom 101.
I first became completely smitten with Agapanthus when I went to California a few years ago. I saw them used as edging along some of the most beautiful gardens in the Montecito section of Santa Barbara. But then, when we went to Carmel, I came upon life-size plants that were as tall as I am – growing in the happiest of states ever (pun intended), as a border plant like no other. The amazing “bushes” in Carmel were as wide as they were tall. (I can’t put my hands on the Carmel photos at this moment, but I will). Before that, they were known to me merely as a specimen plant I picked up at the local garden center and honored in a “hope for the best” in their current environs.
Here are a couple of sites to check-out:
http://www.pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/Agapanthus
https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?PID=60
In Rancho Santa Fe 3/14:
Montecito 3/14
Growing Agapanthus here in New Jersey is not exactly fair. I have a large pot that I take outdoors in Spring and bring into a spot in the kitchen that it seems to like for the Winter. One of my favorite little games I play with myself in the late Winter is to see if it will push a bud or buds. Last year it did not and I was disappointed. But this year, it did, just one, and I haven’t been able to keep my eyes off off of it. I have become completely fascinated with the emergence of the intricacies of this flower. I am sure you have noticed.
While the agapanthus definitely are happy on the west coast, in Summer, on the east coast, I usually run into some nicely thriving specimens on Nantucket, in town, along my strolls. I feel like I am greeting old friends there.
On Nantucket:
If a bud does happen in late Winter, I consider it some semblance of a cosmic gift to me – to help me bridge those last deprivation-drenched weeks of the Winter season here. It’s kind of like having someone up there send me a little hand, a gesture, to help with my teetering sanity. To say that I get a little twinkling in my eye at the awe of this spear rising up so tall in my kitchen when all else is waining, is an understatement.
And so, before my focus turns totally to the out-of-doors, here is the bird’s eye view I have gotten in my kitchen, since approximately mid-March – of the evolution of, what is for me, a magical blossom. I guess this is my only opportunity to watch this closely over it’s life cycle:
Well, there now, I have gotten that out of my system, if only for a moment. It really is amazing how one single blossom can become completely mesmerizing. No other single plant has done this much for me in the house.
Have a lovely day! And, may you find something as simply beautiful as this in your kitchen!
update: Tuesday 4/21
