Tag Archives: Spring

Flurries and flowers

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This morning started with the lightest of flurries. I may have rolled my eyes as I saw the snowflakes flutter down. Spring paid us a visit last week, and some early flowers have started to bud, and after this week’s cold snap, warmer weather is on its way. I’m ready.

Though today started out cloudy and dreary, the sun has come out – not enough to chase the cold away but enough to make the day less dreary.

I wanted to share some of the early spring flowers with you for the same reason. These pictures may not drive the cold away, but maybe they too will take away some dreariness we may feel in the lingering winter.

Because today is a bittersweet day in the calendar for me and several I hold dear – a day that would have been the 12th birthday of one of the sweetest girls I have ever known, a girl who loved purple and wore tiaras as much as possible and turned everyday moments into celebrations, a girl who left us too soon at six years old – for her memory, I want to start with this purple Lenten rose.

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A purple beauty

I find these early blooms a solace, a promise that winter will soon leave. And I thrill to walk out in the garden and see what new flower is pushing its way up out of the cold ground.

The crocuses usually come first, and they must have really enjoyed the colder-than-usual winter. They’re showing off more than they typically do:

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Dainty crocus blooms are usually the first whisper of spring

The other Lenten rose varieties also seem to have thrived through this winter, and I’m enjoying the different varieties.

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Pink Lenten roses, the happiest of my Hellebores

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I love how this one looks like a tiny inverted tulip.

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This variety is producing flowers for the first time, and I’m excited to see them open.

Just yesterday, I noticed my hyacinth bulbs poking up through the mulch. They were a Valentine’s gift from my husband several years ago, and I’m always happy when they come back in February.

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New life among the squirrels’ winter leftovers

Orchid babies!
Even inside the house, there’s new life abloom.

On Saturday, we had some friends over, and one of them wandered in from the room where I keep two orchids – one a gift from my husband and the other a gift from my mother-in-law.

My friend is great with plants, but she enthused about how well my orchids are doing. “I always kill mine, but yours have babies!” she said, wanting to know my secret.

My secret is that I’m following my mother-in-law’s advice and spraying them with a bottle filled with water and orchid food. These are the first two orchids I’ve managed to keep alive for any length of time, and I was happy a few weeks back when I noticed the one from my husband had sprouted new leaves. I’m optimistic, but even if there are no new blooms, I’m content that it’s still living and growing after more than two years here.

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Maybe this one will bloom again?

I was looking at both of them again later that evening and noticed something new on the other orchid, the one from my mother-in-law. I don’t know how I had missed it, but there it was:

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Getting ready to bloom

This will be the first orchid I’ve ever had bloom from “scratch.” And considering that I usually commiserate with orchids when they come into my home, sad that they couldn’t go to a better home for their own sakes, I’m pretty darn excited about the prospect of this one opening up.

For all you orchid growers out there, any tips on repotting? I’d love to transplant both into permanent pots instead of the plastic ones they came in, but maybe I should just leave well enough alone?

For the rest of you, what flowers signal the promise of spring? Do you have a favorite that you look for each year? What ways have flowers given you solace?

The promise of spring

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“Ha!” I can hear many of you saying as you sit blanketed under snow today. Or is it a “Bah!” that you’re calling out to my promising the return of spring.

Spring seems an unreal probability in this wintry season. Even here in the south, we got a little sneeze of snow last night. Not enough to cover the world with its cleansing white cover, but enough to get the local kids excited about a school delay and enough to glue the little kid still inside me to the windows as the snow drifted down last night. I dream of a proper snow day while many of you are ready for it to just. go. away. already.

I will admit to wishing for warmer weather. too. This has been an unusually cold winter, and if it’s going to be this cold, I’d prefer snow to accompany it. While I’m busy wishing for more snow or warmer weather or both – after all, it could be warmer here and still snow, too – I thought I’d share some photos from my recent visit to San Francisco’s Japanese Tea Garden with you.

Some of the trees in the gardens are bare, but there are cherry blossoms, too. And nothing promises spring to me as much as a cherry blossom. So enjoy these photos and a cup of something warm. I promise: spring is on its way, but for some of us, it can’t get here soon enough.

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Nothing promises spring to me like a cherry blossom

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Someone is having fun training these shrubs (trees?) to grow like this.

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The koi and the trees’ reflections mesmerized me in equal measure.

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More reflections, thanks to a clear, still day

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I love the shape of this gnarled tree and am thankful for winter’s opportunity to see the flinging shape of its branches.

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A garden of dwarf trees, while a pagoda looms over the garden

A quick note about this garden of dwarf trees. Sometimes even trees get caught up in wars, and these dwarf trees are no exception. The Hagiwara family that cared for this garden from 1895 to 1942 was, according to the plaque nearby, “forced to relocate” during World War II. I guess that’s the genteel way of describing the internment of Japanese Americans during that war. The Hagiwara family left these trees in the care of a landscape architect Samuel Newson, who later sold the collection to Hugh Fraser. Fraser’s wife gave the collection back to the tea garden in her will, and they’ve been back here – flourishing – for almost 50 years.

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One last picture of these hopeful koi (I didn’t feed them, but they hoped nonetheless.)

What are the signals or promises that you look for to prove that spring will return?

Spring hopes

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For those of you who have been wondering if I’ve been neglecting my garden during the early spring with all the running my husband and I have been doing, you’re right. I have neglected my garden, and as a result, the chipmunks are winning a battle I didn’t realize we were already fighting this season.

When my husband and I came home from an out-of-town trip early this week, he went outside and stayed outside for a looooong time. When he came inside, he was steaming mad. Why? A beautiful camellia had tipped over, its roots eaten/disturbed by chipmunks tunneling around everywhere.

After several years of barely blooming, that particular camellia bloomed more abundantly this year, and a few weeks back, I took some photos of it:

A beautiful young camellia just weeks ago

A beautiful young camellia just weeks ago

I’m glad now that I photographed it when I did, because it may not survive the chipmunk wars to bloom another season. Its lovely blooms stayed well past a typical camellia season, probably because we’ve had a mostly chilly spring so far.

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A showy bloom from the camellia

My husband propped the camellia back up, and he filled in around it with dirt and my usual arsenal against varmints: permatill (tiny rocks that act as a soil conditioner and supposedly also as a deterrent to burrowing rodents like chipmunks); holy moley (mole repellent that apparently does not repel chipmunks); more dirt and new mulch; and holly tone (fertilizer to strengthen the camellia).

We have hope that our efforts will save the camellia, but it has already shed several yellow leaves, and the rest of the leaves look distressed. I’m not sure whether to cut it way back or leave it alone to see what parts may survive, if any. Master gardeners out there: I welcome your advice.

I’ve spent the last few days weeding and planning next steps for the garden, all the while listening for blasted chipmunks to chirp their way past the red camellia. I’m also trying to figure out the best way to protect the other two camellias we have, along with a young susanqua that is a transplant from my mother’s garden. Heaven help the chipmunks if they go there. Continue reading →

True love and running

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One of my favorite stories from the Bible is the account of Elijah running through the desert for a whole day before collapsing under a juniper tree and asking God to please let him die. God didn’t let him die, but instead sent an angel to care for and nourish Elijah so he could continue on his journey to Mt. Horeb, the mountain of God. (To read more about why he was on the run, and what he experienced when he got to Mt. Horeb, check out 1 Kings 18-19).

My husband admires Elijah mostly for his great faith, but he also admires his running skills and likes to refer to Elijah as the original ultramarathoner. This past weekend, my husband joined the ranks of Elijah and other ultramarathoners who have run for a full day.

Yep, my own true love spent a little more than 21 hours running in the woods to complete a 100-mile race. It was dark when he started out and dark when he finished, but there was a whole day’s worth of light in between.

My true love on one of his laps of the 100-mile race

My true love on one of his laps of the 100-mile race

One of the things you’ll quickly learn about my husband is how important running is to him. It was his first true love, a love he found before he gave his life to Christ and an integral part of his life by the time he met me. Even when we first met, I had no idea how much running would weave itself into our marriage.

Continue reading →

There but for the grace of God

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Spring has finally come to my part of the world, and I promise those of you still waiting with snow on the ground, spring will come to you, too. One sure sign of spring is March Madness, that time in the college basketball season when many of us spend too much time in front of the television and too much time at work talking about how our bracket picks are holding up.

On Easter, my parents came over for lunch, and they were somewhat incredulous that I wasn’t planning to watch Duke play Louisville later in the day. Their incredulity is fair, because when I lived under their roof, I was as avid a basketball fan as they come. And at one point, when I played in a youth orchestra at Duke and dreamed of attending Duke for college, I was an avid Duke fan. Watching Lousville beat Duke in the 1986 Championship game was very painful for me, and so I’m never anxious to watch Louisville play.

As Robert Frost writes, “Way leads on to way,” and I ended up attending an ACC school, but not of the blue and white ilk. My team made a hasty exit from the NCAA tournament this year, and so my interest level in the rest of the tournament had dropped to near zero.

So when I turned the television on Sunday afternoon, I hadn’t really been planning to watch basketball. I simply wanted to spend some downtime watching one of the shows I recorded from the past week. But the television was tuned to the basketball, and when I realized it was the Duke-Louisville game, I decided to watch for a few minutes.

I wish I hadn’t turned on the TV at all, because moments into my watching came that awful moment. You basketball fans know the one I mean. Louisville’s Kevin Ware was trying to block a Duke player’s 3-point shot, and when he came down … well, there was no mistaking the leg break. I cried out. I cried out again when the network replayed his leg breaking in slow motion. It is an image burned on my brain, and it made me feel sick. (I will not watch it again, and for those of you who haven’t seen it, I hope you’ll trust my decision not to link to a video of it here. It’s horrific, and you just don’t need to watch it.)

Continue reading →