Thursday, February 23, 2012

Nestling

or Wild

Artsy-craftsy little towns seem to breed in the Finger Lakes area of New York.  Walk into a shop along any Main Street, and you'll find yourself up to the eyebrows in artisan-made glass paper-weights and figurines, pottery mugs with iridescent glazes, hand-dyed silk scarves, and warmly glowing, inlaid woods.  In those stores you move slowly and keep your hand-bag close, lest you knock something breakable to the floor.

I lived in one of those little towns during my mid-20's.  Sometimes after a stressful day I would make a beeline for its row of boutiques, that hushed world where slowness and gentleness reigned, and beautiful things murmured from every shelf and corner.  I would pick up a delicate objet d'art and hold it nestled in the palm of my hand as if it were a wild bird until the stress subsided.

I'm not sure why it worked.  Perhaps it called up deep memories of wonder, of being six and standing rigid and breathless with awe as a ladybug or inchworm or roly poly tickled its way across my palm.  Or maybe the hush reminded me of childhood excursions in the mountains, and Dad whispering "Don't move" in my ear, his hand on my shoulder to still me, while a mule deer crossed the path in front of us.  For whatever reason, in treating things gingerly and holding still, my more grown-up self would remember that hush of wonder for a moment.  I'd walk back out of the store comforted to know that not all problems have to be conquered—some of them really can be tamed instead.


I've never been a huge fan of gravel mulch, which is a pity out here in The Land of Gravel Mulch.  It is an improvement over thirsty lawns and mowing, but still—in most situations gravel is hot and harsh and full of edges in a climate that can be all of those things on its own, without any help from the peanut gallery.  Plants don't care about my preferences, though.  Most of the things that thrive here prefer poor, rocky soils.  I've ended up mulching a couple of the beds in the garden with various sizes of flat, rounded river pebbles, the kind I dig out of the garden anyway.  In late winter, when I've trimmed back the autumn sage and gaura so that the crocuses beneath them can get some sunlight, the long bed beside the patio is very gravelly indeed, in the southwest's characteristic "dry riverbed" sort of way. 


I dream of (and plant) swaths of crocuses in all the beds but get little dots of them instead.  From a distance the individual flowers are kind of disappointing (though up close they're as lovely as anyone could wish).  In the gravel beds, however, I've begun to find those dots of bloom enchanting.  They've nestled in among the larger pebbles, where they look fragile and shy and wild, as if they've blown in on the wind and are taking shelter.  Their translucent petals remind me of moth wings, and I almost expect them to flutter off if I startle them. They're so very ephemeral, especially next to the solidity of stone.  I find myself moving slowly, gently around them, as if they were birds to be coaxed to the palm of my hand, and touching them with feathery light fingers.

The crocuses are no more wild than the artisan-made figurines I used to cherish against inner storms.  But they, too, make me think of that sudden hush when something wild and beautiful crosses your path, of the child's wide-eyed wonder when some small, six-legged creature makes its way across the landscape of your hand.  Suddenly I'm less interested in conquering the garden beds to impose my vision of glorious drifts of color, and more content to have my desires tamed by those little dots of bloom. 


Perhaps I've been tamed and conquered both...

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I'm continuing with the Thirteen (or Fewer) Ways of Looking at a Crocus (or Some Equivalent) Challenge I set myself a couple of posts ago.  Some of my favorite bloggers have responded to the invitation, too.  Please pop over to Experiments with Plants, where b-a-g revels in the color saffron and posts a tasty-looking recipe to boot.  And HolleyGarden at Roses and Other Gardening Joys writes beautifully about small things in A Bloom of Significance.

16 comments:

  1. Every day I rush to the window to see my crocus in bloom.................and I'm still waiting! There are leaves and buds but a distinct lack of sunshine. I'll have to just enjoy yours instead for a while.

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    1. Karen, you have been waiting for days now! I just looked up the Seattle weather forecast--goodness. I haven't seen that many little gray rainy faces in a row in a forecast in years. Still, it looks like Monday may be your day. Clear your calendar and get ready to watch those crocuses...

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  2. I don't have any crocuses Stacy, but have enjoyed the arcs of of soft cream crocuses in the local park and the photos of delicate blooms on blogs like yours.

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    1. Janet, I was stunned when you commented on my last post and am still stunned now. How can you not have any crocuses?? That seems very...unexpected somehow.

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  3. I know it is easy to call a flower your favorite when it is at its peak, and when you have not seen another blooming speck of color outdoors in months... This week, I declare crocuses my favorite. I will have to add some butter-colored ones like yours to my garden someday. I love yours coming up in the round rocks.

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    1. Zoe, it is both easy and right in those circumstances to call such flowers your favorites. I'm glad you have some blooms to enjoy now! I try to imagine that the crocuses among the rocks are growing the way they would in their natural southern European mountain habitat, just because southern and European and mountains all together sounds amazing.

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  4. I will be joining in on Monday as well...just a bit about crocuses but more will follow. I know of those shops and losing yourself there...right now I am looking at snow crocus outside my window planted close so I can see a bit of beautiful color...my neighbors just ignore me as I snap 10s of shots to relish during this brown time....

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    1. Oh, wonderful, Donna! I'm looking forward to it. I figured you would know exactly the kind of shop I had in mind... Are your crocuses blooming already?! How wonderful. Now you're in the home stretch toward spring. Neighbors of gardeners... They should have their own blogging niche. "You'll never guess what my neighbor was doing today" kind of thing. The rest of us, of course, know just how delightful it is to take those photos and revel in color for a while.

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  5. Stacy - Thanks for the shout-out.

    I certainly don't live in one of those artsy towns. The closest we have to what you describe are £1 shops and charity shops, but I can imagine ...

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    1. b-a-g, the funny thing is that those little towns have all kinds of places to buy wedding gift type things, but no place to buy, say, socks. Charity shops are generally much more in my line. I'm surprised some of the owners of those artsy stores didn't ask me politely but firmly to leave, after turning out my pockets.

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  6. I enjoyed reading your post, it was indeed full of wonders... :)

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  7. Imagine finding river pebbles in your garden! We have to drive to Four-and Twenty Rivers and ask, nicely. What would your landscape have looked like before the house? A river bed??

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    1. Diana, my house is in the Rio Grande valley, maybe half a mile or so from the river. In the old days, it was in the river's flood plain during spring snowmelt from the mountains. For the most part the landscape would just have been grasses and cottonwoods (maybe) or cholla-and-sagebrush desert, but every few years for a couple of weeks it would have been ankle deep in muddy water. (The Rio Grande is wide and shallow.) Now the river has been made narrower and deeper in places, and in the mid-20th century, a number of dams and reservoirs and other flood control measures were put in place upstream, so it doesn't flood here anymore. (We assume.)

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  8. After my first poor little crocus bloomed in the rain, I've started seeing more, but not all have emerged yet. They really do make you stop to examine them, and wonder at their beauty - and why they can't come up in drifts! I really like the look of them coming up through your stones. And thanks for the mention.

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    1. Holley, why can't the crocuses come up in drifts??? They manage to just fine in garden books. Oh, well, at least this way crocus season lasts for weeks and weeks, one crocus at a time, instead of being over and done with in a few days. Enjoy yours, as they slooooowly emerge.

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