Bookish Gardener

Bye-bye, baby, bye-bye.

Our five-year-old turns six tomorrow. The day she was born was a sunny Saturday. I was just hanging out, watching an early morning movie channel showing of "The Lady Eve", when the first telltale twinges of contractions began. I got far enough to catch the classic Barbara Stanwyck line: "I need him like the ax needs the turkey!" but had to leave for the hospital before the movie finished. Labor was prolonged, but not painful. Veronica joined us a little after five in the afternoon, in the same hospital room in which her older brother had been born two years before. From the window, you could see the cherry blossoms.

My memories of that last pregnancy and birth are crystalline. From the beginning, I knew that it was likely that our third child (to this no-spring-chicken mother) would be my last. I lived those nine months with the hyperconsciousness that it would be the last time that I would live that experience. Am I over it yet? Not nearly.

So here she is, almost six years later, a being ineffably herself. We look at her, and my husband says, "She's got your brain." And I say, "And she's got your personality." And then we say, in unison, "Thank goodness...no offense, honey."

Earlier this week, I was helping her pull a tight-necked sweater over her head, saying the ritual chant I've chanted for each of my children (Where's Veronica? Where can she...be?). As her head poked through, she was matter-of-fact. Don't say that any more, Mom. 'Cause that's kind of a baby thing. Of course, I knew that day was coming. I just didn't think it would be so soon.

The muse Hortensia

This poem is posted here with the kind permission of the poet, musician and photographer extraordinaire Katrin Talbot. Thank you, Katrin.

Late blossomer

This is Amaryllis 'Apple Blossom', blooming for the first time since I bought it in a bulb kit from the bargain bin at Walmart over two (yes, two) years ago. I've wrung my hands for two winters running as it has sprouted leaves with nary a blossom, but I've been too hardheaded to actually throw it out. And at last, my sticktoitiveness (or inability to let go and move on) is rewarded. This flower opened less than a day ago, with petals shimmering like silk, a green apple throat, and a ruby heart. It's fragrant, but demure about it: you'll smell nothing but grass with a greedy whiff, but if you quietly breathe it in, spring will meet you halfway.

Jurassic pine

Wollemia nobilis, or the Wollemi Pine, is a tree species from the Jurassic period, presumed extinct until discovered by a park ranger in the Blue Mountains of Australia in 1994. After a decade of study, cultivation and propagation in an undisclosed location, specimens of the Wollemi Pine will be made available for sale to the public later this year, with the royalties from sales funding the plants' conservation. (How much? That seems to be undisclosed also. Hope it's not an "if you have to ask, you can't afford it" deal.) The promoters say the Wollemi Pine will adapt well to indoor conditions, growing slowly and keeping its color in low light. With its rich green foliage and bark like "bubbly chocolate", this would be a most intriguing houseplant...I think I want one! (But I hope its chances of survival under my roof are better than the Norfolk pine, also in the Araucaria family, several specimens of which have been rendered extinct under my care.) The official Wollemi Pine site is here, with facts, FAQs and photos. Many thanks to reader Ann Moore for the news and the links.

Color my world

A few days ago I got startled and suckered into a supermarket checkout-stand impulse purchase. I had to have this magazine. Its glossy cover radiated color: bright blue flower planters, stuffed with pink pelargoniums, purple petunias, egg-yolk yellow marigolds, and rose-red dragon wing begonias, set against the soft-focus shimmer of chartreuse and gold in the background. (Yeah, it was the cover, but it might as well have been a centerfold.) It's as though I'd forgotten what color was, in these latter days of gray, with crusted snow banks like the insides of an overfrosted old freezer, and evergreens faded to khaki. Even dreams these days are dun-colored (and sometimes fretful and ridiculous: last night's featured an extremely large rabbit hoisting an extremely tiny rabbit up to one of the whiskey barrel planters, the better for it to gobble away at the tops while simultaneously digging out the plants by their roots). When I can't claw my way out of this total failure of imagination—how could it ever be warm again? and green again?—I turn to these memories of summer past, stowed away for this chilly day, from Hands in the Dirt, and try to start dreaming again in "green bean green".