the photo that started it all 3/17/15 (all photos by me)
I am a flower follower.
Are most humans ritualized around relatively innocuous things? As we age do we find ourselves consciously or unconsciously forming our years around patterns of behavior or interest – be it weather, food, hobbies, books, or in the case of my husband, sports seasons? Or do our lives really revolve around certain central things that we are inordinately drawn towards. Me? I’m enchanted by The Petaled Ones, and tend to follow them around wherever I go……….
Let’s just say, I’m always on the hunt for beautiful flowers. I ogle them in windows, stalk them in the gardens of Paris, in my own back yard, in garden centers (where I go for an instant pick-me-up) collect flower paintings and porcelains and on and on.
My obsession with ranunculus in particular began earlier, but in 2015 I was able to put out my cache of Ranunculus in the window boxes I keep on my covered side porch in the very first week of March. Being one of limited sensibility in certain circumstances, I somehow came to believe that that was a precedent-setting event and I’d be able to do the very same thing in all successive years. That has turned out unfortunately to have been a flawed assumption.
Some day I will get to the item on my long and ever-extending bucket list that asks me to delve into what it means to be so deeply attracted to color. Being that I have a quick-draining brain – one which loses the benefit of sun exposure, vitamin D, that warm sensation of prolonged direct sunlight upon your skin, I descend into an ever-deepening despair all along the days of late November and loll there in a perpetually cranky mood until I can come out of my lair and get into the dirt.
During those days and weeks you can usually find me careening through photographs, either in magazines, books or online of other people’s fortunes. I am not above muttering in an envious tone, complete with a moan or two, when I see my friends on the opposite side of the equator (typically in Australia) relishing in their late season stone fruit-laden salads and desserts and tomatoes as I’m gently shoving yet another roast into the oven. But, I digress.
Say all the negative things you want to about social media but I am elated that I have a place to see other people’s flowers, learn of their extreme passion and devotion and feast my eyes while my soul shrivels, on their beautiful images. I am so lucky to have found the likes of Floret Flower Farm, Paulette Tavormina, Frances Palmer, all the hoop house growers, floral designers’ work and the wide array of historical references, artists and poets, too who wax poetic about the same things I do. It is a comfort to know that I am not the only one with these strong instincts when it comes to the petaled ones.
Let’s just say I’ve become ritualized. I find myself out and about chasing down and bringing home when I can, all manner of sustenance for my flower-starved existence. Herewith is the littlest sample:
As part of my rituals, I try to keep some color in my house all Winter long to keep it from becoming like Bleak House, not Dickens but my version, and my mood from going into that zone, too. I’m usually only moderately successful in the latter but I take my “supplements” often and get myself back as close as I can to satiated mode. I will fill the house with bright colored Cyclamen before Christmas. This past season I invested in some orchids for the first time. They livened up my sunroom for a long while. I have a large contingent of the usually absent red in my kitchen in the name of Amaryllis right around Christmas as well. I always have last season’s geraniums, in various states of disrepair, in the kitchen and sunroom and they do hearten me when they send out their occasional bright pink bloom now and then.
Winter Antiques Show Park Avenue Armory January 21, 2018
Truth be told, I go to the Winter Antiques Show in NY in mid-January to see the flower arrangements more than the antiques – principally because while I can ogle all the beautiful offerings there, I can’t afford any of them.
I will bring home hot house tulips as soon as I see them, even though they don’t last that long on my kitchen counter.
Naples Botanical Garden
Once the tide has turned and the daylight begins to grow to the point that it is actually noticeable, I will begin to hunt around like a desperate squirrel. I will begin counting down the days to March 1. If I am lucky, I will fly off now and then to other climes to refresh myself and reassure myself that life is still living in this hemisphere. This past Winter I was able to visit the Naples Botanical Garden in early January (before the freeze warning when they cut all of the orchids and then covered many of the plants) and again in February.
I visited the NYBG several times as well and saw the outdoor Camellias before they got frosted and then ventured inside the Conservatory on various occasions culminating about a month ago with a visit to the Orchid Show.
The Early Show at the Santa Barbara Mission Rose Garden:
The Rose Garden had received its requisite very heavy prune just a few weeks earlier, but the exquisitely glossy and healthy foliage was abundant and there were some blooms already to enjoy.
out and about in Santa Barbara:
two flowers in the virtually flower-non-existent Lotusland, not that it’s not magnificent:
Over my Easter visit to SoCal I was able to inhale all the glories of California, that most fortunate state where, regardless of what everyone says, life is for living in color and for feasting on all of the glories of gardens, self-sewing and soil-toiling extraordinaire. California is in every way my best state – where the humidity is low, the temperatures are suitable and, except for that pesky marine layer thing, I could find myself playing around outside for 365 a year……….
In April, I will look for a bloom, usually only one, on my Agapanthus that is wintering over in my kitchen. Each and every day, this is a beautiful process to watch unfold.
Anyway, now back to the ranunculus story. Yes, I discovered them several years ago and it seems like since then their popularity has been growing exponentially. There are several things that I love about Ranunculus and for purposes of this story, why I might just be willing to say that I love them more than any of the very-early Spring flowers. Mostly, I’d say I love them for their strong and varied color offerings. They are bright and vibrant and eye-catching. Granted, they’re not popping up out of the soil like snowdrops, croci, or other the other trailing and spreading ground covers of early Spring. But thanks to all of those hoop house growers I mentioned earlier, they come into market very early on and, while I have had many catastrophes by bringing them home too early in the years since that precedent-setting outside planting in 2015, I can say I am in my most happy state when I am carrying home a boat load of these fantastic beauties even when I still have a Winter coat on – and there are not many things I can say I enjoy doing with a Winter coat on.
March 1, 2018 – things made a wrong turn after this and it was back to snow shoveling, winter coats et al – but this particular week was a happy one
Next to their color range and power, I love their form. They alternately resemble the most beautiful ballerina tutus or icing-layered cupcakes. I love to watch them go from bud to full-flown blossom – their centers often being contrasting to their outer skirts. Their buds are second only to poppies which I adore. Well anyway, the time for Ranunculus, very earliest March, is the turning point in the year for me. I look forward to the days that I can go out in search of the very first ones that come into market. Frankly, whether they survive for more than a week or so in those first early weeks is not the central point. It is the beginning of the growing year that excites me. And the form, range of color and cheery disposition, and the exquisite statement that I get as the light captures them just resonates with me.
More than anything though, Ranunculus just say Springtime to me. They are available weeks before my beloved daffodils come out up at the stable, and before the dogwoods both naturalized and planted send their swaths of soft colors across the landscape. Whether or not I can actually shed my coat in early March, I can think of it as the time that we turn the page into another growing season. This year, things haven’t gone so smoothly with the lingering snows. But, I know in my heart that we are done with the depths of Winter. Each day brings new messages foretelling the season. My alliums, which were snow dusted just yesterday morning are moving right along. I have hyacinths up and budding and my peonies are out of the ground by 6″.
just this week
Maybe I’m just a flower follower…………… Just 3 weeks until the Daffodil Weekend at NYBG! See you there!