image courtesy Frances Palmer, for whom I thank for getting the ole light bulb to go off this season
taken yesterday in front of my garage – captioned “mini me”
One season leads to another – such an obvious statement and yet, today, for me, a resonance of hope and anticipation………
There are a few women with whom I share a passion for surrounding themselves with hoards of bright, exquisite blooms the year round. On the top of my list are Frances Palmer, Paulette Tavormina, Erin Benzakein and of course, the inimitable Carolyne Roehm…… I am sure that this list can be extended, but these are by far my favorites at this point in my roamings on this great good earth of growing spaces.
These days I’m out snapping away in my yard as the most instinctive of panic wells up within me – that looming loss of color in the landscape – the fear of going through another six months without those bluest of blues, pinkest of pinks, vibrancy of all shades and contours that so indeed feed and fill my heart up to its deepest corners.
Those of you who know me know, that ever since the end of July and early August when we lost our dearest love, Kit, I have been in some sort of lost in space time – where all my bearings were shaken and I began a period of just existing through the days and wondering where my anchor had gone. Such is the love for a great dog. I needed a period within which to just float and I couldn’t focus on much of anything, let alone writing. I just wasn’t drawn to the keyboard. Today, with our new addition of Harley, a new love who I am convinced was sent directly to us by Kit from Heaven, and having the happiness of my two kiddos right here down the hall, snoozing happily in bed, albeit for just today, I feel like I may have turned the corner. No, I luckily didn’t lose passion for the camera over those weeks. In fact, I think it may have been my only lifeline over these 12 or so weeks. I am lucky to have had it, keeping me “alive” if you will as I trudged through the “must dos” of nearly a quarter of the year, mostly not knowing what I was doing or why. But, today, I feel a bit more “reconnected” and the urge to write has returned. So, here goes, beginning with a little bit of reminiscing.
I have been gardening for most of my life. I began many decades ago as I followed my Dad around our modest, little yard where he designed and constructed small but fruitful and evocative plots of flowers and vegetable plantings. Somehow, I clued into the passion he held for siting, soaking seeds, turning-over ground, planting, tending, reaping and the great sense of accomplishment there is to be had from growing something beautiful and/or edible. All were, I am convinced to this very day, soul-filling endeavors of his, a deep and highly sensitive composition and engagement of human creativity and vision. I learned from him that one need not have a large plot to feel this reward, as was later so confirmed for me watching a man garden on a small square on a terrace in Positano.
Luckily, my following-around activities did indeed blossom into a life-long obsession with beautiful flowers and plants, their colors, forms and life cycles. I was given a very small plot, aside our back steps to grow a bed of zinnias, perhaps when I was about 7 or 8. My Mom gave me an old cookie sheet upon which I made mud pies studded with forsythia flowers, among my earliest mixtures of culinary and gardening in my own mind. I never did stop being fascinated with flowers and in the most recent past, particularly with the advent of the iPhone camera, I have become a bonafide camera nut, finally indulging freely my impulse to walk out the door every morning that it is not raining and capture the offerings in my own yard which draw me like strong magnets to them to capture.
Well, here we are, just past the Hunter Moon on October 16 and we did indeed have a frost, albeit luckily, not a killing one the night before. I am preparing myself to say goodbye to my Morning Glories and Roses which are still pushing buds outside.
At the end of each season I try to gather what I may have learned from the year outside the door. Many times the lesson of the year has laid bare right in front of me for a long while and I didn’t pick up the message, being busy picking up messages to and fro elsewhere. But, this year I finally picked up this one, and it has to do with the delight of the Dahlia.
I have been following many gardeners over many years. Some are novices, some are professionals, some are more like me, just consumed with surrounding themselves with vibrant colors and inhaling the powerful happiness and lifting up which comes along with it. I have all of Carolyne Roehm’s books and take them out often, especially in the depth of Winter when I am starving for color. I have trailed along with the march of the hybridizers as they offer new and expansive arrays of cultivars and colorways in every new season. I began, as did my Dad, with the arrival of the annual Burpee catalog, to sit and study all the new offerings and try maybe one or two each year.
Last year I was fascinated with Hellebores. This year it is Dahlias.
I found Frances Palmer and her work this year online. This is truly one of the greatest benefits of the internet. I have connected with the most amazingly creative people online and I follow them with a great dedication. Like Paulette Tavormina, who is an amazing artist and visionary in floral and still life imagination, design and photography, Frances Palmer seems to walk outside her door most mornings and return with a basketful of magic. I find myself yearning to drive directly to her house and take up residence. I imagine her to be out the door early each morning as I am, and right up until now, cutting armfuls of Dahlias and returning to the table to arrange in a dizzying haze of creative joy. Wow, I say to myself, this is what I want to do. But, first I need my own beds and beds of those Dahlias……….
her bouquet this very morning – image courtesy Frances Palmer
Perhaps it is with the greatest irony and hope that these thoughts are circulating in the old “empty spaces” upstairs right now. They give me great excitement about the next season.
This season, Frances, in particular, helped to finally ignite the long simmering value and power of the Dahlia into my mind’s eye and repertoire.- To the great degree that I am, here and now in mid-October, combing around looking for Dahlias in the market (they’re still picking in the Pacific Northwest – that magical microclimate I have yet to visit) I have begun to anticipate the growing season of 2017. I have finally gotten that bug out in front of me, so to speak. The long season of Dahlias is not one to overlook, in fact it is one to grab onto – that’s my lesson learned from this year. It may seem incredibly odd that this is so – but, all I need is one little thread to cling to as the Winter time sends out its tentacles of dread for me.
Today, there are over 50,o00 cultivars of Dahlias in every color, size and shape imaginable. Some are taller than me – which of course, isn’t that hard to do. Some are of a dwarf nature. This year I had the fruits of a full flat of a small pink version scattered in pots around my yard – including the one shown above. They brought me a long season of joy and continue to do so. I picked these up early on at Melick’s in Oldwick. That I didn’t think to go on a great hoarding venture right then and there is curious.
I love to see the vast array of Dahlia offerings wherever I go. This year, I particularly enjoyed the displays at the NYBG and while I was in Santa Barbara. Still, as Fall rolls along, there are bouquets every week at the Farmer’s Market in Union Square. It seems that you can never see all of the Dahlias. One of their best advantages, the one perhaps that I most keyed into this year, is their great advantage in bouquet-making, as you can surely see from Frances’ work. They offer the greatest of opportunities for creativity and a long vase-time in the house. One only needs to invest in the time of the tuber care, as I learned from my friend Susan, who grew hers across the vast expanse of her front yard on Bailey’s Mill Road every season and then she and her beloved dog Frank, carefully and lovingly pulled them up and stored them on the floor of her third floor of her enchanting historic home.
Floret Flower Farm is another of my very favorite sites to visit both on Instagram and Facebook. There is the land of seasonal abundance and fields and fields of color rising up in celebration, seemingly on a daily basis.
Erin of Floret Flower Farm – key in here to see her amazing harvesting
If you take a look at this page, you will get an idea of Carolyne Roehm’s idea of a day in the yard in Autumn: http://carolyneroehm.com/2012/10/15/a-last-armful-of-flowers-before-winter-comes/
photo courtesy carolyneroehm.com
Here is just a small selection of my photos of Dahlias from later in this season. This whets my appetite and sends my mind a’reeling for the next. And, so, today’s lesson – the end of one season may bring to you a passion-filled promise of a new one to come.
at the Union Square Farmer’s Market
blowin in the wind
inspired by Frances Palmer, my own effort at the late season arrangement
And so, fear not. Have heart, I say to myself. And, thank you to Frances Palmer, Paulette Taormina and Erin Benzakein of Floret Flower for hitching me onto your wagon. I may not be happy with what is to come over the next 6 months or so in the literal sense, but I’ll go there knowing I have some beautiful projects to imagine and hopefully execute.
Take a tour over to Swan Island Dahlias to survey their offerings for next season: http://www.dahlias.com/viewall.aspx?creative=94386733953&keywords=dahlias&matchtype=p&adGroup=21181&gclid=COqTqIbZ4c8CFVZbhgodoSEAaQ
And finally, need a cheering up? Google purple Dahlias and take a gander. Works every time.
j’adore (photos courtesy Pinterest)
Please see the amazing photos I took at NYBG on Tuesday on my Facebook page, A Gardener’s Chronicle.