grainy snow: sharp wind: 28ºF

I’m breathing through a scarf. I’ve got on a down jacket with the parka pulled up. My gloved hands are in my pockets and my toes still tingle even inside my hiking boots and a pair of thermal socks. Outside my cocoon though, the toughest of the early flowers have begun to bloom. Last week there were almost none. This morning the botanical garden is filled with colonies of snowdrops. The cold wind and the overcast day keeps them closed, but they’re here nonetheless. So too are two or three colonies of the pale- purple snow crocuses called Tommies (Crocus Tommasinianus). I don’t remember when I've ever seen them look so good. Soon after they open, Tommies usually topple over. Then as their paper-thin petals rub against the ground, they soon start to look tattered and shop worn. The Snow Crocus be the one early flower that is at its best on a dull day like today when it stays folded like a tightly closed umbrella.

What else? I saw a few crocuses -- the usual purple and yellow types – an iris reticulata, and a small patch of aconites. Several shrubs of the powerfully fragrant Winter Honeysuckle (Lonicera fragrantissima) were also in flower. So too were some hellebores including this large, white-flowering one named Christmas-rose (Helleborus niger ‘Altafolius’).


In the Chinese Garden a shrub of Winter Jasmine (Jasminum nudiflora) started to put out more than a sprinkling of yellow blooms this week. Oddly enough, a companion shrub planted inside in the temperate glasshouse has not bloomed yet.

Putting aside all of these early, winter-impermeable blooms, I saw a sure sign of the approaching season. A small flowering quince has broken dormancy and spread its first new leaves.

I see all of these early blooms every year – sometimes earlier, sometimes later. Each year I wait for them and marvel when they finally flower. It’s as though I need the winter to shake off the jadedness that sets in from seeing too many seasons of color.

Flocks of robins are digging in the newly spread layer of leaf mulch that now covers most beds in this botanical garden. The birds also are feeding on a crabapple tree that still is loaded with fruit. Oddly enough, the tree – a Sugar Tyme Crabapple (Malus 'Sutyzam') is cited as a tree that the birds stip bare almost as soon as its fruit ripens. One source even says that Sugar Tyme crabs are favorites to some thirty species of birds. From what I saw this morning, Sugar Tyme is more a desperation food than a delicacy. I’ve found that sometimes web sources have a reality apart from what I actually see in my walks in the garden. I wonder whether what one site cites as fact is simply cut and pasted by another and then another until what was at first an mistake becomes accepted as truth.


Inside this botanical garden work began this week on a floral clock that’s being built to mark the garden’s 150th anniversary. The clock, meant to harken back the botanical garden’s Victorian roots, is being built midway between two reflecting pools. The design calls for the clock to measure twenty-feet across and to be tilted upward about six feet from the ground. From a birdhouse atop an adjacent pole, a bluebird (the official state bird) will pop out every quarter hour to chirp the time. For a week during the baseball season the bluebird will be replaced by a cardinal to cheer on the home team.

The plants used in the clock will change with the season, but a color scheme of whites, yellows, and purples will be a constant. It’s a sure bet that the space in front of the floral clock will become the favorite spot to pose for photos. I look forward to seeing the clock. I remember when I was a kid I posed for a picture in front of the great floral clock in Niagara Falls. That 40-foot wide clock is still there and still ticking. I am too.







clouds: persistent northwest wind: 34ºF

“Was there ever such bravery, such delicious effrontery as is displayed . . . by the witch-hazel in mid-winter?” wrote English writer Beverly Nichols in his forever entertaining book Down the Garden Path.

A week of warm weather has brought dozens of witch hazels into bloom in this botanical garden. In the last two years, the garden added more than 75 new varieties of witch hazels to its collection. A lot of the new additions look like short, bare sticks that have been stuck into the ground, but even the youngsters have managed to put out a few flowers. Judging from what I saw in bloom this morning, most of the new varieties are Hamamelis x intermedia, a hybrid of Chinese and Japanese hazels. The hybrids are touted as having larger, more plentiful blooms that smell good too. Since I was breathing through my scarf this morning, I can't say. I do know hybrids are colorful though. I saw varieties that had flowers with shades of yellow, muted red, and burnt orange. Some had petals with short stubby filament-like petals. Others were long and wide, twisted or crimped. Here are a few of the ones that were in bloom today.

My favorite: a Hamamelis x intermedia variety named ‘Vesna.’ I checked the word’s meaning. In some Slavic languages Vesna is the name of a spirit that visits the earth in the springtime. Compared to the all of the other witch hazels I saw this morning, ‘Vesna’ has the longest petals. The petals on the flowers drape into a cone shape as they spread from their merlot-colored centers. Vesna’s hot, shifting colors remind me of some the new varieties of purple Coneflowers that aren’t purple anymore.

Just in time for Valentine’s Day – the world’s record for hand dipping strawberries into chocolate has been broken. A candy shop owner in New York dipped 65 berries in a minute breaking the previous record of 48. I thought about a video of the berry-dipping that I saw on the news last night as I looked at the tiny red flowers that have just broken through their dark, hairy bud protectors on the Persian Ironwood tree (Parrotia persica) in the English Woodland Garden. The casing and the flowers are pellet sized. Even when they’re fully open they’re easy to miss. I spotted them a few years ago by chance and now check on them each year around Valentine’s Day.

The keepers of the glasshouse that shelters plants from Mediterranean climates planted a dozen or so varieties of rare aloes last fall. Now most are putting up flowers spikes that tower over their fleshy rosettes. Some of the flowers that pack the spikes have already started to bloom. Red-orange and yellow I’ve seen so far. Even more interesting are the buds though. Each bud looks like a finger-sized zucchini. Because they’re so plump and would be so easy to harvest, I have to wonder whether aloe buds are edible. It’s easy to imagine a side order of aloe buds dipped in cracker crumbs and lightly sautéed or even deep fried.

Maybe not edible, but still a treat is the blooming of the variegated Winter Daphne (Daphne odora 'Aureo-marginata'). Stooping down to take in the heady, sweet fragrance of their tiny pink clusters is high on my list of indoor winter treats.

Perfect for Valentine’s Day: a pair of walking sticks, both upright, and leaning on each other for support.