Gifts of the Natural World

Flowers. Nothing calms me like picking flowers. It is my meditation. Picking, mixing, choosing the best matching vases; clipping browned and insect-nibbled leaves; stripping sharp thorns; snipping a faded bloom or two, already gone by.Snow drops, crocus, grape hyacinth—the first to peek out from beneath the snow. Daffodils, a gift from a friend,  once followed, bending their heads to gentle spring breezes. The daffys, multiplied for several years—naturalized, then succumbed to ravaging squirrels.

Lilacs, the ones I gather each spring in a mass for the vase Emily made me, my lilac vase. The vase is a permanent fixture in my life. It sits in the cupboard awaiting spring, awaiting the lilac bloom—the sole purpose for which it is reserved. Emily’s friendship, once as solid as the base of the vase she threw on the wheel, is ephemeral, each spring more distant, less graspable than the last.

Roses, roses like in my grandmother’s garden. Roses that do so well in the damp Maine air. Tiny, pink fairy roses bloom in perfusion. The climbers, red, and those I call my “pink lingeries,” wind themselves about the railings of the deck. The rugosas, a darker pink and white ones, fill the spaces in between.

Hydrangeas, magnificent blue (I have tried to turn them pink with English pennies, but am never sure copper is the correct additive to achieve the result—apparently not).

Gentians, a darker blue, planted in my mother’s memory.—Jenny, her name was; Jenchen, the diminutive.

Sweet peas, magenta and white, have taken over everywhere, their tendrils curling about the other flowers, the ferns, the blueberry bushes. All but the pink variety, which I somehow killed.

Oh, and let’s not forget the lupines, welcome interlopers that seed themselves among the beds. After rain, each leaf holds a teardrop in its hollow.