gardens

Healing Blossoms in Winter

February 12, 2019 by Margaret Philbrick Leave a Comment

Last weekend I fell on the ice twice. Who didn’t? Despite my trusty Bearpaw boots, the thick layer of fresh powder disguised the ice rink beneath. Slam…Ouch! Move all limbs, check for broken bones, breathe a sigh of relief. I’m walking, but currently find myself holed up inside facing yet another “Winter Storm Warning.” If you live in a place that keeps you screaming at six a.m. “Not another school cancellation!” consider indulging in one of the greatest blessings of winter…fresh flowers.

A rainbow miracle amidst the grey comes to us every year from Hausermann’s Orchid Farm in Addison, Illinois. During late February and the first weekend of March, you can breathe 90 degree humidified air and feast your eyes on blooming phalenopsis extending to the horizon (at least to the six acre under glass horizon.) Periwinkle Vandas, orange Cattleyas, fragrant Miltoniopsis will assault your senses, confuse your internal compass AND give you the groundhog reprieve in only about two hours rather than six weeks. We make pilgrimage to this place every year to relieve our sinuses and restore our marriage. This isn’t an overstatement. One year we faced a significant financial crisis and found a safe place to reestablish our lines of communication in-between those mossy aisles of arcing color. The orchids helped bring healing to our frayed hearts. Here’s Miltoniopsis also known as the pansy orchid. It’s hard to grow without significant humidity, but well worth a try.

With Valentines Day upon us, a gift of flowers may be predictable, but also glorious. My husband gave me one of my most favorite birthday gifts ever last year when he surprised me with a bouquet of fresh flowers delivered on the first Monday of every month—for a year! These arrangements in their clear cellophane wrapping take my breath away each time the doorbell rings. Here’s February’s mix of lisianthus, magnolia leaves, lavender roses, eucalyptus and stocks. Also, this shop flings their excess rose petals on the snowy sidewalk in a startling display of luxury topping frozen slush. Also check out my friend’s gorgeous flowers at Gatherings. She and her husband do literally everything creative with flowers a person could possibly think of, even disguising a basketball backboard with ribbon and fabric and adorning the hoop with a floral crown for a gym wedding reception. They don’t use grocery store flowers which are short lived, they buy direct from the wholesaler. Lisa can also design and deliver a monthly floral arrangement for your beloved if you ask her. Many of us love to play, plan and party with flowers, but she is a true artiste des fleur.

Over the years potting narcissus bulbs at Thanksgiving for Christmas blooms and amaryllis in December to keep blooming through February fills our home with foreshadowings of summer. This holiday amaryllis variety, which I skeptically bought at Home Depot, is one prodigious bloomer. The first stalk of all four flowers opened in January and the next one of four flowers started in February and continues to grace our kitchen window with red-tipped warmth. A sturdy stem of four open flowers brings a peaceful symmetry and unity, but this second stalk actually contained five flowers! Kind of like finding a five leaf clover under a mat of wet, fall leaves.

If you’re looking to jump start your spring gardening with more than seed trays on windowsills then a trip to the Chicago Flower and Garden Show at Navy Pier this March should do the trick. Wander through 21 gardens and demonstrations by local food growers, topiary artists, arborists, hardscape architects, and perennial experts all ready to engage your imagination with grand plans. Be careful about the grand part, start with one manageable area this spring and add to it a bit each year or you’ll find yourself overwhelmed. Remember, more gardens = more flowers = more weeds.

Even a single stem brings joy and unlike following Marie Kondo’s kamikaze method of tidying up, this one won’t be painful to throw out when it’s life is over, unless it’s from your first Valentine and then you should dry it and keep it forever. When our daughter was born her daddy brought me roses in the hospital and I dried them and saved them in this Valentine box for a special occasion in her life someday. They still look beautiful 24 years later as they wait inside that tissue paper nest!Happy Valentines Day with much love and don’t forget the one who made all this flowering love possible,

“We love because he first loved us” 1st John 4:19

Graduating Baby Corn Plants

June 25, 2016 by Margaret Philbrick Leave a Comment

Like millions of others, our youngest child graduated from high school this month. “Millions have done it before you and millions will do it after you,” my husband was told when he signed up for the Barbri course to prepare for the bar exam. There is something everyday, you’re just a number about graduating from high school. In the U.S. it’s common and rates are at an all time high with 81% of students graduating. As I hung graduation lanterns over the patio and sent out announcements I couldn’t escape the “been there done that” rudimentary feeling…until driving home from Wisconsin put me face to face with thousands of baby corn plants.

Their simple rows of lime green spriteness reflected hope. Each of them owned the potential to give something back to their planter and maker despite their soft leaved vulnerability. “Knee high by the Fourth of July” seemed impossible with only four inches of growth on Memorial Day. With the right conditions their single growing season will produce abundant food, about 800 kernels on a single ear of 16 rows. By November, those soldiers left standing dry, brown and brittle will blow over with the first winter blast. Left unharvested, their final act feeds the soil to strengthen the next crop. Our son’s eighteen years felt about the length of one growing season, but was it beautiful, rich and nourishing enough to grow a self-sacrificing adult?

iowas_corn_planting_window_closing_1_634720646406876000

His little toe head of curls, one of which I keep tucked in a Limoges box on my dresser, felt the same as these first little corn leaves I stooped down to touch after pulling my car over. They also carry a soft curl before they toughen up in the face of sun, wind and rain. Making friends came easily for our young one and I wondered if these little plants become tight with their growing partners who share their space in just a few weeks. In every grade, desk partners and playground pals became friends out of convenience and necessity. He formed “The Purple Punk Club” with his skateboarding buddy in first grade – their mission – stealing the kindergartner’s ball. Naughty, but adorable boys. The corn plant doesn’t veer off mission unless deprived of nutrients and water. Did I water my little guy enough in those early years? Without water the tassels don’t form, there is no pollination, no kernels. I watered him with books and music, Berenstain Bears, Beatrix Potter and Yamaha Music School. As a graduate, he doesn’t read much for pleasure and would rather slam on his basement drums. Were those countless Berenstain bumbling stories enough to bear fruit in his developing soul? Well, drumming can be food for people. It aligns to their heartbeat and leads them into worship or it can offend and harm sensitive ears, a.k.a. his 82 year old grandmother. What happens with those drums is not my decision now.

Precious few of us know at eighteen what we want to be when we grow up. When he built his first drum set at three years old out of cookie tins and oatmeal containers we suspected. Dozens of concerts and thousands of practice hours later, our suspicion is confirmed. Come harvest time his hands and heart will be cultivating a new field in a new state with new gardeners, but the beating of the drum still pounds out his growing song.

One proper growing season can produce millions of ears of milky white corn kernels, enough to feed a country for a year. One tiny house on the corner of President street and Liberty sends its youngest child off to college, but the tassel of golden silky hair remains in my Limoges box. The mother’s privilege is to take it out and ponder it’s possibilities when the silence of beating drums in this house produces a relieved sigh, an empty ache or a hunger. I’ll stop to savor a buttery rich ear of corn with a nice cold glass of pinot gris and toast the truth that although they all travel off to plant their own field, the farmer’s job is never done.

We’re All Spring Ephemerals

February 23, 2016 by Margaret Philbrick Leave a Comment

While walking my yorkie-poo this morning I spot these early harbingers. Tufting out of the last fall’s rotting leaves a sunshine nugget shoots forth, one blossom so tiny you could miss it. After looking right then left, I reach down beneath my big toe and pick one. A single winter aconite (Eranthis). Six transparent yellow petals surround a burst of stamen rays, all clustered together to protect themselves from what might be tomorrows predicted snow. They belong in the ranunculus family (my favorite flower), but they look like summer buttercups. Ephemeral – transitory, short lived. Like us.

We’ve been admiring “Bobby’s winter aconite” since our kids piled into double strollers and headed down to our neighbor’s corner. All of us longing for a blast of fresh air and someone to kick their new spring ball. You know the ones Target keeps in corded cages that you wrench the ball free from revealing its pastel glory, knowing that in about a week, POP! MOMMY(sobbing, hitting). Winter aconite makes a yellow carpet in Chicago’s February sun. Our eyes stare at the vivid swath of ground level warmth after months of twiggy grey, white and black. Color, all too short lived burns our retinas with newness of life.

The single stem now sits in a tiny bud vase on my writing desk, actually a Sanbitter bottle from the grocery store. Lifting it for a sniff propels me through today’s writing projects with a dose of perspective. We are all Spring Ephemerals. Our lives start out every bit as fresh as this bud, no wrinkles, unfocused blue eyes, cradle cap heads in need of nurture by caring, mature hands. We unfurl, for good or bad. With grace we’re given our day to bloom. Our eighty years is an hour equivalent in the life of this unassuming flower. Yet despite its hiddenness, the silent beauty of winter aconite dependably bursts upon us, leading us into the full spectrum of color which is there for the taking every year.

“What is all this juice and all this joy?

A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning

In Eden garden.”

from Spring by Gerrard Manley Hopkins