October Surprise

or Things to Remember

A lot can be forgotten in a year:  the names and terms of all the US presidents;* the capital of Mauritania;* what that one key in the utility drawer belongs to.  Some things are a relief to forget; some are more or less irrelevant (not meaning any offense, presidents and Mauritanians); some are kind of a nuisance (what does that key belong to?).  Some, though, end up being unexpected pleasures.  My favorite things to forget every year are the fall-blooming crocuses, because they have such charming ways of recalling themselves to your attention.

Well, really, just the one way.  They bloom.  But that's pretty charming.  It's a pity we can't do that ourselves when we need someone's attention—so much more appealing than "Ahem."

I've grown two kinds of FBC's before, Crocus speciosus and C. sativus.  C. sativus is the saffron crocus.  Its flowers aren't spectacular, really, but they're perfectly attractive, even more so since you can conjure up imaginary sauces while you look at them.  They have the pleasant habit of blooming in November, though they're fickle and may decide not to bloom at all.  They also have the unpleasant habit of sending up their leaves ahead of time and hanging on to them until April or later.  Six months of leaves outweigh the brief days of bloom, I find; since the sauces have so far all stayed imaginary, growing the flowers for a tiny amount of saffron doesn't seem all that exciting, either.  All the sativus I planted last fall, except for a few sly, eely ones that got away, were dug up in the spring.  They're hanging out in pots these days, putting up leaves, and later they will be whisked off into a corner with the black widows for the winter.

We're not talking about C. sativus, though.  They aren't much of a surprise, what with the leaves letting you know that they're coming and all.  The ones that do surprise me every year are the speciosus crocuses.  The flowers come out of nowhere, it seems, since the leaves don't appear until spring.  I returned from vacation a couple of weeks ago to find a small group basking merrily in the sunshine. 

I wasn't even waiting for them this year, not even in some tucked-away, undusted little alcove of my brain; I really had forgotten all about them.  The crocuses are looking a little lost there among the greenery, but the flowers do seem to stand up better with other plants' support.  I'm not just saying that as gardener's "spin"—a white-washing way of not admitting that I had forgotten about them and planted other things in their spot.  I did forget about them.  Completely.  They're just better off that way.

Since then other crocuses in various small patches have been blooming, with one or two new flowers opening a day.  The fall-bloomers have an idiosyncratic character and appeal, separate from their beauty, blossoming as they do out of sync with the season and with the rest of their kind. They're like little floral post-it notes with reminders written all over them, and the reminders are all of pleasant things—starting with the fact of their own existence.

They also remind you of ephemerality—a little bit of a jolt, when autumn is only slowly moving along, and the other things still in flower are the kinds that bloom for months on end and still have weeks ahead of them (Go, 'Wild Thing' autumn sage!).  In their own gentle way the crocuses suggest that you might want to pay attention to each day's changes as the year wanes.

They remind you of the joys to be found in bulbs and corms, which is handy, since a box of 500 ipheion, scilla, muscari, and sundry just arrived on the doorstep, and someone is going to have to plant them.  How nice to have a little inspiration blooming at the same time.

They remind you that bees have favorites, too, and that all those blackfoot daisies and marigolds and the licorice mint and basil and sage are fine in their way, but crocus pollen is Something Else Entirely. 

They remind you to keep an ear out for the sandhill cranes' return.   (Almost right on cue a creaky purr resounds, and you see outstretched wings glinting in the sun as a family of cranes rides the thermals down the Rio Grande valley.)

They remind you not to fuss too much about color combinations in your garden, because Mother Nature sure doesn't.

They remind you that short-term fragility and long-term toughness can go hand in hand.  The flowers will be gone in another few days.  I will forget about them soon after, and the bulbs won't get any water or fertilizer or special attention.

And they'll be back next year with an October surprise.
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* I've never actually known this.**
** That I recall.

Thirteen (or Fewer) Ways of Looking at a Crocus

or Comparing Apples to Apples

The poem Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, by Wallace Stevens, uses blackbirds as a kind of touchstone for different perspectives.  The birds are a recurring theme, sure, a point of departure, but also a way of testing moods and images against something constant.  When I was in grad school for music history, every year the composition students were each asked to write music for a stanza from the Thirteen Ways.  Their group concerts (called things like "Twelve Ways of Looking at Six Ways of Looking at a Blackbird") were always among my favorites—I loved seeing how such different perspectives, such powerful individuality, could spring from the same material.

Crocus chrysanthus 'Cream Beauty'

A friend of mine who teaches English starts his writing class every year by asking students to describe an apple.  Sometimes they get stuck:  how many ways can you say "roundish" and "red"?  Then he offers suggestions:  the role of apples in family traditions (Mom teaching me how to crimp a pie crust,  and telling me about dinners of apple dumplings during the Great Depression); in seasonal rites (apple picking on a crisp, New England autumn day, fresh-pressed cider from a roadside stand); in the garden (showers of apple blossom petals, their scent filling the air; espaliers stretched against a wall; underplantings of daffodils); in the ecosystem (the soothing drone of bees, the gnawings of codling moth larvae, the barely bitten apple discarded by squirrels); in legend (forbidden fruit, apples of gold, dwarfs and evil step-mothers); in the economy (the complex journey from orchard to table).

His point is that even something as simple as an apple isn't self-contained or shut off from the world.  It exists in a web of interactions.  Suddenly my friend's students don't know how to stop describing an apple.

C. chrysanthus 'Blue Pearl'

In some ways, gardens are full of endless variety and wonder.  In other ways, the same things tend to happen pretty much every year.  (Not that that isn't also a source of wonder.)  After my first year of blogging I found (and still find) myself stuck every so often—in a tiny garden, how much really changes from one spring to the next?  What remains to be said?  The bulbs come up, and I take photo after enthusiastic photo of the crocuses...which look remarkably similar to the photos upon photos of crocuses I took last year, which look an awful lot like the ones from the year before that. 

Because the crocuses haven't changed.  They just keep blooming in the same way (even if they are three weeks early) and in the same places as they always do.* 

So far, my primary way of looking at a crocus is a gleeful one:  "The crocuses are blooming!  The crocuses are blooming!"  It's a lot of fun, actually, but I wonder what would happen if I set myself the challenge of finding some new ways, too?  Probably not thirteen of them—that seems a little excessive—but more than one.  If your crocuses or some equivalent are up and running and you feel like taking part in the More than One but Fewer than Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Crocus (or Some Equivalent) Challenge, please do, and please let me know about it.  Don't consider it anything as formal as a meme.

It would just be nice to wonder how to stop describing a crocus.
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* This is not a complaint.

Wonderment

or In Which We Are Surprised Once Again

Bulbs, all  in a swath

At this point I'm pretty well used to being surprised by the fall-blooming crocuses.  They'll still be a surprise when they bloom, but an expected one, if that makes sense, an "Oh, yeah, that surprise" kind of thing.  Lately, however, they've outdone themselves.  They've already startled me, and they haven't even put up buds yet—in fact, they probably won't for another month or so.  But I have them on the brain, as this is the perfect time to plant them (although later works too), and apparently that's all it takes.

With the vague memory of thinking last fall, "I must plant a larger swath of fall-blooming crocuses next year," I headed out to one of my favorite nurseries yesterday to purchase bulbs.  I came away with two bags each of C. speciosus and sativus, 40 bulbs in all—not enough for a huge swath, but enough to make a showing in my small garden.

Then I got them home, and surprise! I don't know where I'm going to put them, because surprise! the fall garden doesn't really have room for anything as large as a swath.  Besides, on the garden map with all the bulbs' locations pencilled in, I never marked the fall bloomers, and surprise! I don't remember where they're already planted.  Since they don't put out leaves until after flowering, there's really no way to find out where they are until surprise! they start to bloom.  Probably at some point last year, leaving the crocuses' location as an enjoyable surprise for this year seemed like a good idea.  (Hey, thanks a lot, last year's self!)  Either that, or I just forgot.

So now I'm left with a lot of questions (and 40 bulbs):  I wonder why I didn't figure out where to put them before going to the nursery?  I wonder where to find room for 40 bulbs, or for anything, all in a swath?  I wonder where they could possibly get enough sunshine, where a sun-loving plant isn't already growing?  I wonder whether I should put them in the most sensible place, or if I should assume that that's where I planted last year's batch?  I wonder how this is going to pan out?  I wonder what I was thinking?

Oh, the satisfaction.  Because this is what we all love so much about gardening, really.

The wonderment.

Evening Stars

or Out of the Spotlight

I have learned a deep respect over the last few years for my Winter Gem boxwood bushes—for any evergreens, really.  I planted the Winter Gems right outside the glass kitchen door because I knew I would want something cheerful and green to look at during the winter, and because they were able to take the extreme conditions in that little strip of land.  I had always thought of evergreens as the equivalent of background noise in a movie—glasses clinking in a dinner scene, papers rustling in an office—the kinds of things you would miss if they weren't there but don't really pay attention to when they are.  Even so, when a handful of bushes grows half a dozen feet from the kitchen table where you sit morning and evening day after day, you do eventually begin to notice them, and once you do, you realize what amazing troupers they are.

In the boxwood bed a sprinkling of ipheion—spring starflowers—that I planted half-heartedly a couple of years ago has begun to take hold.  At the time, I didn't know whether they would do well or whether I would even like them.  Then the first one bloomed; I loved it so much that ipheion became Microcosm's header.  Even though all the froth and exuberance and vividness of spring, the blooming redbuds and tulips and narcissus, are incredibly exciting, I still appreciate the cool quiet of ipheion.  It's like a pool in a forest, like mint leaves in ice water, like the evening star in a twilit sky.  If I could dive into that blue, that green, I would emerge again refreshed.

Just as the evergreens give their best during the—well, even poetic license won't let me call them the "dark days of winter" here in New Mexico, but I hope you catch my meaning—the ipheion show their best in shade.  Somewhere I read a description of their color as skim-milk blue—white washed with a weak tint—and in sunlight and as the flowers age, that's true.  In shadow, though, their gentle colors and ever-so-delicate shadings come forward; the petals gleam in twilight.

I'm beginning to re-envision the boxwood bed as the Light in Darkness (even if it's only metaphorical darkness, or possibly just shadow, or at any rate, not direct sun right at this moment) bed, as a home for plants that shine brightest out of the spotlight—or, put another way, that are still willing to shine even once the spotlight fades, that will give of their best without one.  Some evening primroses, perhaps, and a soft-textured groundcover; a bowl of water in the shadows.  Nothing in it will be a show-stopper.

But even without a spotlight, the show will go on.

Fragments

or 4 x 4

The quilting materials my mother inherited from my great-grandmother some 25 years ago were a jumble of tiny jewels—diamonds and triangles of fabric that had been cut but not yet pieced together, or that had been pieced into building-blocks but not joined into larger sections.  Really, the fabrics were just "plain goods"—calicoes, bits of feed and flour sacks, simple cottons—but they were old, some dating to the early 1900's, and so somehow exotic.  In the box, pale yellows jostled lurid pinks and lavenders, softer aquas, true reds; delicate florals and tiny dots hobnobbed with bold checks and pinstripes.  They were fascinating fragments of cloth (of a woman's history, of an era), probably leftovers from other projects; there weren't enough pieces of any of them to make a completely matching quilt.  But they were what great-grandma had, and she made the most of them.

My mom finished several of the quilts.  It's astonishing how the pieces disappear into the larger pattern, all those separate vivid prints and colors, all the mismatches turning into subtle shadings as they take their place in the design.

I was thinking about parts and wholes today while looking at the garden.  Its winter identity has been shorn away, all the seed heads and stems and branch structures that gave it dignity and integrity.  They have been reduced to an awkward, gangling mess of spikes and stalks and lumps that have no apparent relationship to one another, no balanced proportions, no sense of shading into a whole.  The crocuses, while lovely on their own, are too newly planted to be more than random dots of blossom—rather than blooming en masse, each one seems to be following its own rhythm.  Instead of providing charming swaths of color to distract from the spikes and stalks and lumps, they are acting as charming exclamation points drawing attention to every little awkwardness. 

Until the spring growth fills in, it's a scrap-bag of a garden, a jumble of fragments divorced from a design.  But how fascinating those fragments can be... One 4 inch by 4 inch patch of ground, for example, home to a handful of waterlily tulips, kept me occupied for longer than I care to admit.  The tulips' leaves are just beginning to stretch out in earnest, and they are a study in curves, from nautilus spirals to new-moon arcs to flamenco swirls.  They capture light and funnel it along the leaf edges; they radiate warmth in the morning and cool in afternoon shade; they are a good argument for wearing vertical stripes.  They are still so small that they can barely be seen from the patio; once they bloom, the leaves won't be noticeable at all; once the sand cherries leaf out, the tulips will disappear into the larger pattern of green.

In the meantime, they are what we have—let us make the most of them.

Waterloo

or A Fateful Day

A vicious Arctic blast? No problem.

Snow and ice? Please.

Gale-force winds and sub-zero temperatures? It is to scoff.

As you may recall from a recent post, the Lady Jane tulips were more than a match for the winter storm we had a couple of weeks ago. Confronted by nastier weather than we almost ever encounter, they grew, they thrived, they flourished. They welcomed whatever Mother Nature threw at them—welcomed it and quite possibly danced a breathless tango with it. They had the fire of spring coursing through their little botanical veins, and mere weather—the weather that brought two-thirds of the country to a standstill—could not stop them.

And yet, they have since met their Waterloo:

Sir Marley.  The neighbor's cat.  Don't be deceived by that heavenly beam of light.  It is a trick of the camera, nothing more, and an accidental trick at that.  (In any case it is certainly nothing angelic.)  I would like to say that Sir Marley used some brilliant Wellington-ian strategy to defeat my poor tulips, that they met their fates honorably in a battle which, really, could have gone either way.  But I can't.

He sat on them.

I believe he also napped on them and may quite possibly have rolled on them, as the ground has warmed up nicely this week, and the garden is pleasantly sheltered from the wind, and napping and rolling become irresistible to cats in these circumstances.  I even sympathize with him, because it really has been a gorgeous week.  As someone who was not planning to celebrate spring by rolling in the dirt, however, but by reveling in the eventual sight of cheerful spring flowers, I am a little disgruntled.  I do wish that pet owners would remember that they are responsible for their pets whether on or off their own property.  But, since they won't, I will break out the heavy, cat-repelling artillery.  (Garlic pellets, here we come.)

If you have any brilliant Wellington-ian strategies to offer I'd love to hear them...

A Dubious Moral

or Better Late Than—

Never let it be said that I am a bad influence.  Far, far be it from me to lead the innocent down the primrose path to vice, profligacy, and unhelpfulness, let alone to traipse down that path myself.  And yet...

First, however, let me apologize.  The world is a wide and varied place, and some of you are reading this from the balmy coast of southern California, the warm mesas of Arizona, or even the summery Swartland of South Africa.  You won't be remotely impressed by what follows, but please be patient—there's always the moral.

Meanwhile, others of you are struggling against blizzard winds, blinding snowstorms, and sub-zero Fahrenheit temperatures, and, if you have the same reaction as one of my Vermonter friends this week, you are likely to be really, really irritated.  As I was drafting this post today (in the sunshine on the patio, while a finch murmured sweet nothings to the world) I threw down my pen and literally said out loud, "I can't show this to anyone north of the Mason-Dixon line."  Then the immortal words of Jerome K. Jerome came to me, from the Preface to Three Men in a Boat:

The chief beauty of this book lies not so much in its literary style, or in the extent and usefulness of the information it conveys, as in its simple truthfulness. ...This, more than all its other charms, will, it is felt, make the volume precious in the eye of the earnest reader; and will lend additional weight to the lesson that the story teaches.

Truthfulness, yes!  One of the great virtues.  With that reminder, emboldened to continue on in the pursuit of "hopeless and incurable veracity," and without even a hint of southwestern smugness, I offer this current photo from my garden:

The fall-blooming crocuses keep on coming.  I'm pretty sure that the ones blooming now are the batch I planted late this fall—too late, really, or so it seemed at the time.  The pickings at the local garden center were slim, and I took the last few bulbs out of a "grab bag" bin.  But the timing has worked out surprisingly well.  Whereas the bulbs I put in last year flowered this October, the ones that didn't get planted until November are just beginning to make themselves at home.  One at a time they're coming into bloom, and each blossom is its own little explosion of joy.  Even compared to the flurry of blossoms in spring, this little scattering in December makes a pretty impressive emotional impact.  The bare fact that there are flowers in December—how much more exciting does it get than that?

Had I planted the bulbs in September, when they're supposed to be planted, they would long since be a thing of memory.  Instead, by deciding to plant more at the last minute, I am enjoying zing after zing of late-blossoming excitement.  To me this seems to be a clear instance of the virtues of procrastination.  I don't know how else to interpret such plain facts, or what more obvious moral can be drawn from them.   It may not be the kind of moral you want to teach your children, and yet, the facts remain. 

Vice.  Profligacy.  Unhelpfulness.  I do apologize.

At least it's all true.

Laying the Groundwork

or Hangin' Out with Some Buds

The leaves are such a rust-red that I almost expect them to creak on little hinges.   Instead they teeter silently, precariously.   At a breath, one of them falls, making just the slightest hiss as it strikes home.   Autumn has taken hold in earnest now, and the sand cherry's rich russet warms its niche in the garden.   The color is an arresting testimony to the season on its own, but it also lets the deeper chestnut of the stems speak more clearly.  As I approach to enjoy their resonance, I am struck unexpectedly by the tangential suggestion of spring.  Even as the leaves die, the buds are swelling.  For some reason I find these preparations for the coming year, this faith in growth, oddly touching.

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Ipheion, or starflower, is a spring-blooming bulb with pale blue flowers atop grassy stems.  (The flower in Microcosm's header is an ipheion.)  Its leaves come up early in September and linger throughout the winter months.  They look more like grass than the actual grass in this neck of the desert—they are kelly green rather than sage, and they grow in thick, spreading tufts.  When bruised, they give off a slightly fetid smell, like chives that have gone over to the dark side, but they are pleasant to look at all winter.  In spring the leaves have the decency to wither soon after the flowers do, since they will gather all the nutrients they need the following fall.

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 I still have Alison Krauss's Steel Rails running through my head:

Steel rails, chasin' sunshine 'round the bend,
Winding through the trees like a ribbon in the wind.
I don't mind not knowin' what lies down the track,
'Cause I'm lookin' out ahead to keep my mind from turnin' back.

That phrase "lookin' out ahead" has stayed with me all week.  I've been thinking about the contrast between my little road trip last weekend, with its own take on looking ahead—a mixture of adventure, the chase, and escapism—and the garden's preparations for spring.  Generally when I think about plants heading for the shady side of autumn, I think of them as battening down the hatches—hauling in all the paraphernalia of growth and hunkering down in their roots to ride out the storm.  Since my garden is too small for generalities, however, we are left with particulars, and they don't always bear that image out.  Instead we find plants actively preparing for spring, laying in stores, and looking beyond the fallow period to the next season of growth and bloom.  They are not only caulking the windows; they're also plowing the ground. 

This expectation of goodness to come is not "chasing sunshine's" elusive dream—a quest for that better world always just around the bend—but solid, reliable optimism based on the gene-deep knowledge that seasons turn; on the certainty that spring will, in fact, come again.

I have often thought of gardeners' forward-looking tendencies as a kind of denial of winter deadness.  As I've been slowly getting bulbs planted this fall, I've come to see that tendency instead as a way of laying the groundwork for spring; ensuring that dearth will give way to abundance, to crocuses, Siberian squill, starflowers, lady tulips.  It's about knowing yourself, about looking ahead to your longings for growth, and taking the steps to meet those longings while you can.  It's yet another of gardening's lessons in hope, but also a lesson in realism, in preparation.

On the other hand, marking off the days on the calendar until the seed catalogs arrive in about six weeks—that's denial.

Great Expectations

or "The crocuses are blooming," she said belatedly.

Many science fiction and fantasy worlds rely on the idea that people see what they expect to see; if characters come across something that doesn't make sense, they usually re-interpret the vision to suit their expectations rather than the other way around.  Lois Lane can work side by side with Clark Kent all day every day and never recognize him as Superman—even though she's looking for Superman—because she doesn't expect the Man of Steel to wear glasses and a three-piece suit.  The muggles in Harry Potter's world can encounter shrinking door-keys and biting teakettles and never glimpse the magic behind them, because such an answer isn't anywhere on their horizon of expectations.  "Bless them, they'll go to any lengths to ignore magic, even if it's staring them in the face," sighs Mr. Weasley.

I've been feeling a bit muggley/Lois Lane-ian this week, because the fall-blooming crocuses have been blooming, and I almost missed them by expecting something else.  I'm new to the world of fall-blooming crocuses, but with the spring-blooming kind, I always expect the following:  About a month before the crocuses bloom, leaves appear; about a week before blooming, buds appear; for that entire time all is eagerness, anticipation, and suspense; then the blossoms open, and all is glory and delight; after a few short but spectacular days, poof! the flowers and leaves fade away into nothingness.

Having planted a handful of fall-blooming crocuses last year as an experiment (the bulbs are expensive, and I wanted to be sure they would thrive before getting enthusiastic about them), I've been watching for crocus-type activity since about the first of September.  Not  having seen any leaves, I'd pretty well given up on seeing any blossoms.  Great was my surprise, then, when I walked out into the garden the other day to discover these, already past their prime:

 

And these, coming into full flower:

Apparently, fall-blooming crocuses just up and bloom, and let the leaves happen at some more convenient time (either later in fall or in spring, depending on the variety).

Without the leaves, the flowers took me completely by surprise.  I don't think of myself as unobservant in the garden, but I didn't see any buds at all, not even for the crocuses in the beds where the ground cover hasn't filled in yet—i.e., in open dirt with no distractions.  But the buds have to have been there, right?  Even fall-blooming crocuses can't subvert all the laws of nature.  While we had some cool, blustery weather last week that wasn't conducive to long, lingering perusal of the garden beds, I still suspect that the real reason I didn't see the crocuses coming up is that I was looking for something else.  The buds had been there for days, and I overlooked them because they weren't following the leaf-bud-blossom-and-fade plot outline.

Instead of starting with the eagerness, anticipation, and suspense, the fall-blooming crocuses' story has been all about the glory, delight, and poof!, which is fine, but rather...rushed.  The surprise has been most enjoyable, but I did miss the pleasure of expectation, even though I suppose I can still look forward to the leaves showing up some day.  (And while I don't mean to criticize the design, I must say that to have the expectation follow the glory and delight seems a little disorganized.)  (Of course, it's always possible that I've imposed this plot outline on the crocuses arbitrarily and that there's no real reason for them to follow it.  But a good master narrative is a good master narrative.)  Still, the glory and delight have been strong enough that I rushed out to buy more bulbs yesterday.

I fully expect to be surprised by them again next year.