Cherry Blossoms and More

 

Friday, March 23, 2012 – Cherry Blossoms and More

I just finished my annual spring ritual – the potting of the pansies.  This is my major gardening achievement and I’m very proud of myself.  I’m also soaking wet and covered with dirt.  Some extremely bedraggled flowers now reside in the pots on either side of the front door.  Fortunately, it’s almost dark so I can’t see them too clearly.  It upsets me to see such limp plants.  I hope they survive these prematurely hot temperatures.  If they perk up, I’ll take some photos.

Otherwise, my half-hearted attempts at gardening are confined to a small corner of the front yard where the liriope, nandina, mint, some bushes whose name I can’t recall, and a lot of hideous juniper have thrived despite my neglect.  I’d love to kill off the juniper, but it just won’t die.  Oh, and one more of my few concessions to plant-stewardship is the herb garden that I grow in pots on the back deck.  If I remember to water them, I’ll have basil, oregano, chives, thyme, and rosemary. 

My relationship to plants is similar to my relationship to pets.  I feel uncomfortable with this dependency thing they have.  It’s not like caring for a child who eventually becomes capable of caring for him or herself (if you’re lucky).  With a plant or pet, that’s never going to happen.  I want to say to these plants out there – grow up, already.  I don’t know what accounts for my attitude.  Perhaps it’s the fact that we had very few plants or pets when I was growing up.  After our parakeet died when I was about 8 years old, we never had another pet.  And I don’t remember any plants in our home or any gardening work that my mother did.  Whatever the reason, I never developed the pet- or plant-nurturing instinct.

Even with my lack of gardening talent, there’s plenty to appreciate in the great outdoors in the spring.  Washington, DC is justly famous for its cherry blossoms, which appeared quite early this year.  Although I didn’t go into the district to walk around the Tidal Basin this week, I’ve had more than my fill of cherry blossoms right here in northern Virginia.  And the cherry trees may get all the attention, but the magnolias and redbuds are equally spectacular.  Each type of tree seems to have its own personality.  The magnolias, which bloom first, are the sultry, voluptuous beauties of the season.  As soon as the magnolias begin to shed their heavy velvety flowers, white and pale pink buds appear on the cherry trees.  These trees are the charming ingénues, with a delicacy reminiscent of the finest porcelain.  Their first tiny blossoms seem suspended, floating on the gentle breath of spring air.  My favorite neighborhood cherry trees are a pair of weeping Yoshinos whose abundant blossoms form a lacy canopy.  

Magnolias

Cherry trees

Redbuds

Everywhere you look, you see cherry trees – in yards and parking lots, along roadsides, on medians strips of heavily trafficked suburban thoroughfares, growing wild in wooded groves, overlooking a stream, leaning out over street corners, standing in front of Annandale High School.  They’re already losing their tenuous hold, however.  A breeze stirs the warm air and they swirl around me, immersing me in a cherry blossom storm cloud.

But personally, I get a greater thrill from seeing the redbuds, a tree native to this area.  In terms of personality, the redbud is the casual yet elegant sophisticate.  Luscious clusters of tiny reddish-violet blossoms adorn its slender limbs.  I wish I could find a name for the startling color of the redbud flowers.  It’s more like a rich, rosy lavender, or a cross between an amethyst and a ruby, or a frothy mélange of grape and cherry.  If I’m distracted when I walk or drive, it’s because a redbud has caught my attention.