Last weekend, Anne invited Tanya and me to sit in the front yard of her house and sip wine. This surprised me some as the temperature only reached about fifty degrees that day and the wind was blowing. One doesn’t turn down such invitations, though, so I pulled on my winter jacket and gloves and joined our wonderful neighbors at the appointed hour. It turns out that the wine was only a bonus. The real point of the gathering was to enjoy the scent of Anne’s fragrant viburnum—fragrant is part of the plant’s name—which is a fleeting gift of spring. The shrub is a foundation planting, blooming up next to Anne and Todd’s house, and its scent could be best appreciated in the small part of the yard not occupied by the serviceberry. I sat there in my winter coat and gloves and counted myself fortunate indeed.
The experience reminded me of spring at our last house. Every year, there would come a time when we could look out through the vast wisteria draping from our slatted deck roof and inhale the sweet perfume of the mock orange bush blooming in the back of the yard. The yard at our present house doesn’t have the sunshine those plants need, although perhaps it will, given how this winter’s storms ravaged the trees.
Spring’s been long and lingering thus far. The magnolias have been flowering for weeks now, which is most unusual. Routinely, spring delivers a day, maybe even a few days, of riotous magnolia blooms. Then some combination of wind and rain sweeps the petals from the trees, and that’s it for the magnolias for another year. By now, the ground is generally strewn with the petals of all the ornamental trees. This year, the flowers are hanging on, adorning whole streets as bridal bowers.
My collection of yellow magnolias recently sextupled in size. That’s collection as explained by our friend Judy who, herself, collects Greek Revival houses. In this sort of collection, you don’t personally own the items you collect, you just know where they are. We were with Judy, years ago, when she added two houses on Joy Road near Dexter to her Greek Revival collection. This is a splendid way to collect. You don’t even need a budget.
The yellow magnolia I’d already collected is in a back yard in the next block of our street. It’s not a robust specimen; it hasn’t had the room it needs to spread out and grow. It’s planted right next to a pink magnolia, and the pink one is struggling, too. The trees are making the best of their circumstances and blooming where they’re planted, but hardly anyone notices them, especially the yellow one.
Five more yellow magnolias are blooming at University Commons, off Huron Parkway. They’re young and small, but they seem to have what they need in terms of location. Everyone who sees them will enjoy watching them grow and bloom, and these up-and-comers bring my collection of yellow magnolias to six.
Our friend Cindy brought us a bouquet of tulips a couple weeks ago, and they’ve been entertaining us ever since. I’d forgotten how active cut tulips are. They don’t just sit in a vase and look lovely. No, they spend their time striking poses. When we first put our tulips in water, they arched demurely over the edge of the vase. Gorgeous. The next morning, they were all standing straight up, as if their stems were rubber-banded together.
Since then, it’s been every flower for itself, some bending up and out, some sticking straight out on diagonals, some doing double bends. It’s different every day, and at shorter intervals as well. Time-lapse photography of cut tulips would not be boring. Do florists have this kind of floral activity going on in their display cases? Do they even include tulips in arrangements, knowing that the flowers’ positions will change over time?
My husband just suggested we go out for milkshakes. So we did. When I walked the dog yesterday morning, I wore just about all my winter gear: winter jacket, winter hat, and mittens, and carried hand warmers. Whether or not the calendar claimed it was May, I wanted not to be cold. The wind was blowing hard, and snow was a possibility. This afternoon, the sun is shining, and the temperature’s over sixty degrees. I threw on a fleece, mostly to stave off weather-related cognitive dissonance. This weekend the temperature may top eighty degrees. If it does, the fleece will stay in the closet.
Soon, when the neighbors get together outside, it will seem normal. I can hardly wait.
5 May 2023