About 1,000 years ago, or in 1967, to be specific, the Fifth Dimension, a pop group, recorded “Up, Up, and Away,” a song about bout love and ballooning. The refrain goes, “Up, up and away–My beautiful, my beautiful balloon.” It was a huge hit, combining the ideas of love, hot air, and rising above earthly … Read more
It is clear from even a brief tour around the garden that extensive squirrel landscaping has happened over the past half year. Little “tommie’ crocuses, or Crocus tommasinianus, sprouted weeks ago in the lawn and other areas far removed from where the bulbs were originally planted. Now, having played their role in the early spring … Read more
In a memorable scene from the Rogers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific, the character of Emile de Becque sings: “Some enchanted evening, you may see a stranger, You may see a stranger across a crowded room,…” I had a similar feeling one semi-enchanted afternoon, when I saw a bush clematis across a crowded garden center. … Read more
Scent is important to me. I have been known to stop in my tracts to insert my nose into a particularly alluring rose or inhale the intoxicating fragrance of a blooming linden tree. I didn’t expect much when I got up close and personal with an echinops or globe thistle, but to my surprise, the … Read more
You won’t find a lot of men wearing boutonnieres or, in the more prosaic English translation, “buttonholes”, these days. Individual blooms stuck through the buttonhole of a jacket or pinned to a lapel are still on view at weddings, proms and other festive events, but the days when fashionable, suit-wearing men wore a fresh flower … Read more
