The Pollen Count

Every year in the Shire's spring, our pleasure over all the flowers and new leaves

soon turns to discomfort and even misery.

That's because with each flower comes extremely high levels of pollen.

This photo is from en.wikipedia.org > pollen.

It shows pollen collected on a tulip bud.

And that powdery pollen soon turns everything 

a ghastly shade of yellow green.

This year, it started as a sulphur yellow;

in recent days, it has begun to show signs of light green.

This next photo is copied from craftylilthing.blogspot.com, 

originally posted April 11, 2008.

The powder on the table is only a snapshot of the way most things look

this time of year:

photo posted by pj on www.craftylilthing.blogspot.com

The mess it makes cannot be understated.

A fine, light powder coats the grass, the sidewalks, driveways, 

the decks, the patios, the lawn furniture,

and even the flowers and shrubs.

pollen on a small lake near my house

It languishes atop the water in lakes, streams and puddles.

It powders our skin, our hair, our clothes, our cars, and our pets.

We have to keep our doors and windows closed,

lest our homes become powdered on the inside as well.

photo from en.wikipedia.org > pollen,

a marmalade hover fly with pollen on its face and legs.

And yet, like many things in life, pollen is a  double-edged sword.

Without pollen and the bees who carry it,

there would be no beautiful flowers in the spring.

And that makes all this powder worth the trouble.

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Tulips

"The Surprise Tulip"

There is nothing more lovely than a mass of tulips in full bloom.

In today's blog post, read about a tulip that returns after years of sleep.

photo, morguefile.com

Each day of warm weather brings a new flower to Spring's stage.

This week brought one unexpected candy-stripe tulip.

More than a few years ago, 

I planted three flower pots with spring bulbs:

daffodils at 6 inches, tulips at 5, grape hyacinths at 2-3,

all topped off with johnny-jump-ups and violas.

here are the pots, before the tulips bloomed

And they were beautiful in their sunny location on top of a brick area.

But then summer came and every summer annual planted in those 3 pots

dried up in the heat and looked scraggly and unattractive.

No amount of watering helped save them.

So I moved the three pots to the back yard, which is very shady.

And the next spring, only the daffodils came up and bloomed.

Same for the next spring, and the next.

I had even forgotten I had planted tulips in those pots until this week. 

The daffodils were spent, so they had closed their yellow trumpets, 

rolling them up into a dark gold package 

before disappearing completely until next spring.

photo, morguefile.com

And then yesterday, I saw it: one pink and white-edged tulip

standing out from the daffodil leaves.

Where had he been all this time?

Perhaps this quote from Nathaniel Hawthorne 

explains in part the tulip's sudden reappearance:

Love, whether newly born, or aroused from a death-like slumber,

must always create sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance,

this it overflows upon the outward world.

The answer lies in there somewhere,

shrouded by the mysteries of plants and flowers 

and the subtle energies of nature.

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Wisteria

Wisteria is one of those spring flowers

that seems to suddenly appear from nowhere.

I was aware that there was such a thing as a wisteria vine,

but I had never seen one until I moved to the Shire.

The first one I saw was in an old greenhouse at the Norfolk Botanical Garden.

The trunk had grown thick and sturdy and the vine wandered over and above our heads.

It was a wonderful moment of discovery.

photo  from google image, fineartamerica.com

According to wikipedia.org, the wisteria 

is native to the Eastern U.S. and Asia.

In the Shire the wisteria drapes itself across the thickets of trees and underbrush

that grow along the roadways, creating walls of purple.

This next photo shows the color of most wisteria along the highways.

Generally the indigenous vine (a member of the pea family)

has a pale violet blossom, like this:

photo, morguefile.com

Its preference for the interstates and byways is part of the magic of wisteria.

One moment, the vine is far from our memories, nearly invisible;

the next, the purple wisteria comes cascading down trees, posts, and arbors--

any place that will support their vining habit.

In this photo, a wisteria vine has encircled the balusters in a deck railing:

photo, morguefile.com

This photo shows wisteria at its best.

I love its purplish-blue color, similar to tanzanite:

photo, wikipedia.org

Wisteria--it's a lovely,

and sometimes unexpected, sign of spring.

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