This Morning Wants me to Get Off the Internet

I wrote a post about Eostre, the goddess of upspringing light, goddess of spring and of the rabbit, who welcomes buds with bonfires, but the internet doesn't want you to read it. Instead, on this first Sunday after the first full moon of spring (thank you Grandpa for your great lectures on the moveable feast that is Easter), the internet wants you to get outside. Look close at the ground for what might be working its way into the light. Light a bonfire, and call me if you do. There's lots and lots of work to be done.

Now here are some photos of the lilac and magnolia branches that I brought inside two weeks ago. I suggest trying this out, if you're as impatient as I am for what is to come.

 

Who Scouts Before Us

The other night, in my dream, I bumped into my maternal grandfather. He was smiling mischievously in his St. Patrick's Day banjo-playing outfit. We both knew he was a ghost, but it didn't matter. He had come to party. He tilted his hat to me, and then he was off.

My grandpa was a fantastic gardener. He sacrificed generous amounts of MiracleGro to the garden gods, but he also toiled and tended his plot carefully, and produced in turn a hearty amount of flowers, vegetables, and fruits. My aunt gave me a pile of his photographs recently, which are all filtered through summer evening light and motes of floating soil.



I love the one above especially, which seems tantalizingly quiet and slow, like a frame from a really patient film. Just watch the water track across the hot asphalt. You can hear the cicadas buzz. I can see my grandma sip her ice water on the screen porch. Summer! Summer comes toward us again. 

Birthday flowers

I made a surprise bouquet for a friend-of-a-friend today, and felt very springy in the making. It included pale pink tulips, jasmine vine, and plumosus, a thorny velvety fern.

I tucked some brunia in for a second, too. Though their color was perfect, their shape didn't fit at all. (I'm trying to learn this stuff, with help from this book and this one.)

Tulip stems elongate in water, even after they've been cut, which lends them that characteristically droopy look. I struggled for a bit trying to straighten them up, but eventually we all succumbed to the wild frilly movement this bouquet seemed to demand. I'm pretty happy about it.

If you think flowers may be the perfect gift for an upcoming birthday or other event, be in touch: email me at flowerscoutfarm@gmail.com, give me at least a few days notice, and we'll make it happen.

I know what I said;

I said we were just about ready to bust. And, as is always the case when the present seems unmoving, the present had passed just as soon as I wrote it down.

Given a south-facing rock wall and a few days of sunshine, the present becomes something heretofore unrecognizable.



My goodness--suddenly serious work is impending! All of the putting-off of plans, the wavery envisioning, the procrastinatory daydreaming: OVER.

 

GET READY FLOWER PEOPLE

these boots feel so good

Biding

We're all waiting.

 Planning.

 

Scoping, envisioning.

Staring out of windows.

Dealing with the little deaths and the big ones, softening up. 

Just about ready to bust. 

(Photo #1 is a box of future blooms, #2 is a future home of Flower Scout. 

Nos. 3 & 4 represent all cabin fever waste-away. Oh March, oh March. 

Spring's smell is undeniably in the air.)

Some Bulb or Other Grows in Brooklyn

Last weekend, I visited my smart and generous friend Lina in Brooklyn. My stated purpose: Scope flower shops. Scope, scope, scope.

And the weather complied, so I spent two sunny days bouncing between the dots called up by google maps each time I searched for "flowers." Staring at my phone-map, sipping on good coffee, checking out the nearby outfits, and generally being absorptive: The weekend was a success. Some good hard yoga, some high-concept faux-commune dining, the birds in Bed-Stuy singing, Lina's sprouting avocado pits and lemon seeds, and many hypnotic vibrating train rides later, I have a new appreciation for city living. And a stockpile of photos, some of which are below.

Something is growing, by golly, something is coming out of the ground

A magazine I did not buy, and an apple harvest I would have jumped up & down to have seen last fall, when apples were few.

 Forsythia at the MoMA

 A floorscape of hazelnut pollen

(self-explanatory)

Terrarii abundant in the flower shops of Brooklyn

plum blossoms

 

things are more expensive in the city 

 

 THANK YOU DEAR LINA