The Bounty in a Bulb

“Special Glass for Hyacinth Culture,” by Vitavia, February 8, 2017, via Wikimedia Commons.

I had forgotten all about this piece, written over a decade ago, until the blog Garden Rant contacted me about a month ago. They were looking for photos for their guest posts as many had been lost and they were rebuilding their website,
What a gift it was to relive sweet memories.
Wishing for a beautiful spring for us all,
—S.K.

The Bounty in a Bulb

I’ve had my share of bulb fever over the years. It’s always the same, coming on in late summer, intensifying with fall, and eased only by hours poring over full-color bulb-porn catalogs and long, excited lists. I’ve splurged a few times, putting in big orders that included the practical (species tulips, muscari, Darwins) to the extravagant (parrot, fringed, and peony tulips, Allium ‘Globemaster’ and shubertii.)

And I have loved them all.

For me, it began sixteen years ago, during the first fall in the home we live in now, with my first real garden. I wanted bulbs and lots of them. Early in November, eight months pregnant with our second daughter, I planted 180 in one day; dozens of fancy tulips for the front of our bungalow (most lasted one season), ‘King Alfreds’ by the street, drumstick alliums, crocus, and blue ‘Glory of the Snow’. I remember my sister-in-law Victoria’s charming comment on how the husks enveloping the daffs were their “little jackets for the winter.” She helped me dig big holes and instructed me in proper bulb planting–sprinkle the holes at the bottom with bone meal, add enough bulbs to make a nice show.

I ended the day sore and happy. The next spring, in a new home, with a new baby and so much floral beauty, was glorious.

Looking back now, with the girls mostly grown and nearly two decades of gardening behind me, I realize that what made it glorious was not really the bulbs. What filled my heart was springtime itself and our young family (I see it now as a mirror image of the youthful abundance then around us). In a word, love. The bulbs were just icing on the cake. I know this because three years earlier I felt just as happy sitting on a small porch in May, at a different home, with no garden to speak of, and our first baby in my arms. That spring I fawned over what grew in a section of our cramped yard–a few scruffy grape hyacinths (not planted by me), scrawny wild roses canes that came from who-knows-where, beginning to bud, and the antics of a single robin. Simpler, but just as sweet.

That said, I know that hopping on the bulb-buying bandwagon is hard to resist. Gardening, for many of us, is a giving pursuit, and pleasure comes in delighting not just ourselves, but others. When I see a neighbor on our sidewalk, stopping, smiling, pointing at something I’ve planted, I’m thrilled. If you are in the business, it’s pretty much a duty to have a show-stopping garden and first-hand plant education. But for those of you who don’t have money to spend on bulbs for the spring and are feeling blue, to you I say, “It’s okay.” Personally, my bulb catalogs are where they’ve been stashed for the last few years, in the “maybe” pile on the reading table, as in, if something happens where a ton of money comes my way, I’m gonna buy me a LOT of bulbs. It’s not going to happen again this year, and you know what? It’s fine.

When spring comes I’ll enjoy those hardy bulbs that have persisted in my garden, grape hyacinths, the six ‘Globemasters’ that get smaller each year but are still fascinating, the few bright spots of Darwin tulips that always bring a glad surprise, and a patch of those prolific species tulips, the Tulipa clusianas. If I find I can’t live without buying something this fall, it’ll be a small purchase, maybe a box or two of those $2.99 bulbs I’ve been eyeing at the grocery store, or a fragrant hyacinth at the neighborhood garden center to force in a colorful glass (it is a lot of fun).  As the proverb goes, it only takes one to feed the soul.

Simon’s Snowdrops (with a poem)

Galanthus nivalis and Galanthus nivalis forma pleniflorus ‘Flore Pleno’, by Simon Garbutt, March 2006, via Wikimedia Commons.

 

The Snowdrop

by Lord Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892)

 

Many, many welcomes,
February fair-maid,
Ever as of old time,
Solitary firstling,
Coming in the cold time,
Prophet of the May time,
Prophet of the roses,
Many, many welcomes,
February fair-maid!

* * *

I love this upbeat end-of-winter poem by Lord Alfred Tennyson. Just what we need (or, at least, just what I need!) on a grey February day.

I found the image on Wikimedia Commons this morning. The gardener/photographer writes:

“This is a direct scan, which I made myself, from bulbs of two different common snowdrops; the normal Galanthus nivalis and its double-flowered version, Galanthus nivalis forma pleniflorus ‘Flore Pleno’. Both are common in gardens throughout Britain, and are also found naturalised in woodland.”

Thanks, Simon, and Lord Alfred, for sharing your work, your flowers!—SK

* * *

Crystal Light of Morning

Pikesview Quarry, Colorado Springs, Colorado. Photo from The Gazette Telegraph archives, by Carol Lawrence.

 

Crystal Light of Morning

In the crystal light of morning I look to the mountains.
The earth has been cut open, it is bleeding red.
the snow is like a blanket covering the dread.

In this shimmering, frigid air I can see the veil between us and them.

This ancient earth and the ancient humans abhor the modern world that is now.

The earth is alive. The broken open skin of the earth cries because of these atrocities.

—Ginger Hipszky

* * *

 

Photo of Ginger and Gretchen by Skee Hipszky.

Virginia (Ginger) A. Hipszky was born in 1960 in Franklin, Indiana. She relocated to Colorado Springs, Colorado in December 1979. She has one daughter and two stepsons. Various interests include reading, collecting modern and ancient coins, amateur radio, book proofreading, and collecting rocks and fossils. Meteorology and astronomy are two of her favorite passions, and she also enjoys writing poems and prose.

* * *

Note from the Editor: I met Ginger a couple of weeks ago at a mutual friend’s art sale. She told us of a poem that had come to her, inspired by that morning’s view of the first significant snow of the season on a mining site nearby. I found the poem captivating and asked her if I could publish it here. Ginger said yes, and then wrote a little about how it came about in an email: “When the sun first comes up, it turns the exposed granite pink. . . [The poem] just came to me. I felt anxious all day till the words got out and on paper.”

Everyone in Colorado Springs, Colorado is familiar with the mining scar of Queens Canyon Quarry, not far from the one in Ginger’s poem. During a little research I found an article that told how that quarry was mined for limestone, to be used in the concrete foundations of buildings at the Air Force Academy, the Colorado Springs Airport and NORAD (and, I’d add, tens of thousands of homes and businesses). The article stated that in 1966 when Stewart Udall, then Secretary of the Interior, visited here he dubbed our city as “the city with a scar”. For many decades people remarked on its ugliness and how it marred a landscape that held, so close by, geologic wonders like our Garden of the Gods and Pikes Peak. Here’s the link to that article if you’d like to read about how 20,000 hours of volunteer labor went into reclamation of that area below. The good news is that now you can actually see trees growing on this area.

Queens Canyon Quary, Image from ImFromColorado.com. Another discovery I made is that it is very difficult to find images of the scars. Understandably, they are not something people enjoy photographing.

 

As the YA author John Green wrote, “The marks humans leave are too often scars.”

—S.K.K.

 

* * *

 

Growing October by Pat Kennelly

“Young Girl Carrying a Pumpkin” by Fausto Zonaro, via Wikimedia Commons

Pat Kennelly and I met in the garden. The virtual garden, that is. Years ago she noticed my first blog, Greenwoman Zine, where I was writing about my community garden experiences and and my new publishing venture. She wrote me, and I was excited to learn we lived in the same town. We met and a friendship bloomed. We feel that gardens are places of magic, places to play, to create, and cultivate plants that nourish the mind and soul. We’ve shared plants: dahlias, tomatoes, succulents, and more, and when we were checking in the other day we started talking about Halloween. “Do you have a poem about the garden in fall?” I asked. She sent me the one below, and I said, “Tell me more!”

–Sandra Knauf

Growing October

I.
By the garage—
in that poor soil
where nothing grows
except hens and chickens
and velvety lamb’s ears
I plant October.

II.
When I find them, in the late afternoon light,
I want to lie with them, waxy and smooth yet stippled
with scar tissue. When they were green, ghostly,
we carved our names into their soft skin.
Now their leaves gently brush my cheek,
they wrap their tendrils around my wrist
pulling me in.

* * *

Pat shares this about her poem and her gardening:

I wrote this poem in 2012 after I literally fell into the spot where I was growing larger pumpkins next to the garage. I was riding my bike and was overloaded with books from the library . . . I lay there, hoping no one saw me. It was so peaceful among the vines, the poem came to me. I never did write my name in a pumpkin, but I read you could do that (pumpkin scarring). In the last three years, I haven’t grown pumpkins. They take up so much room and I fell hard for the flowers in the garden. But I did love growing them.

I’ve been gardening since I moved to Colorado. I’ve always been drawn to the beauty and informality of cottage gardens. I love growing herbs and vegetables alongside climbing roses, grape vines, and an abundance of old fashioned flowers including dahlias, zinnias, sweet peas, day lilies, bachelor buttons, sweet William, poppies, and native Colorado wildflowers and grasses. And like most gardens mine has evolved over the years, I still have space for herbs, onions and garlic but the last few years the bed for vegetables has been sacrificed, I willingly let the flowers take over. For many years I grew pumpkins, mostly the smaller ones or odd ones I couldn’t find easily in Colorado like ‘Lumina,’ or ‘Baby Boo’ or ‘Jack Be Little’. The larger pumpkins, I grew outside of the garden fence where they had room to spread their vines and leaves with abandon.

Pumpkins from Pat’s garden. Photo by Pat Kennelly.

Pat Kennelly is a poet and writer who lives and gardens in Colorado Springs, Colorado. She often incorporates the natural world and the beauty of place into her poetry. Most recently her work has appeared in Poet’s Market, Messages From the Hidden Lake, and Haibun Today.