By Anna Kunnecke
Once a good hard rain finally washes away the last of the sakura and the stink of hanami booze clears from the trains, the peonies appear. The neighborhood bushes get sticky and covered in ants, while the flower shop buckets are full of ridiculously tiny hard knobs on top of leafy stems. The peonies look less like flowers than like lollipops that've been licked almost all the way down. And not very good lollipops, either; they're an unappealing greenish brown. But good heavens. The tight orbs open up into luscious petaled pillows of color. The peonies by my building are a deep magenta, and over the course of several days the flowers will fade to a pale pink. But my absolute favorite are the white ones with the tiny little splotch of crimson in the middle.
This is all usually happening around Golden Week, when the whole world shuts down and you want to stay off the highways if at all possible. Naturally no one in my family has the sense to do this; we usually trip off gaily on a trip, which means that we spend hours and hours stuck in traffic. Luckily, there is a lot to see from Japanese highways. On our recent trip north, we saw farmers crouching in wet paddies planting this year's rice crop, and every field and meadow was running wild with the pale yellow of nanohana, rape seed, part of the lowly mustard family.
Back in Tokyo, the wooden arbors that stand ugly and naked in the corner park are dripping, absolutely dripping, with pale purple fuji, a wisteria variant. The fragrance is enough to make you drunk, much like the beautiful empty cans of chuhai (lethal wine coolers) that also adorn the park.
The one floral treat missing from my immediate vicinity is banks of iris. They're famous in Japan, the haughty fashion models of the flower kingdom, and there are specific dates at specific gardens when you have to buy tickets in advance and stand in line and peer over your neighbors' shoulders just to catch a glimpse. Being inherently lazy, I haven't actually made it to one of these iris extravaganzas. But I have seen the impressive scenes on some very pedigreed calendars, and I'm sure they are worth the wait and the crowds and the aching feet. But until I get more motivated and organized, I'll just admire the one spindly stalk rearing up out of the Styrofoam box in front of my local pharmacy. It is a deep royal purple and has more flounces and attitude than any runway waif.
Besides, I have more urgent matters at hand: the hydrangea. The stippled cat paws of pale green are starting to flash little teasing hints of blue or pink or purple, and then, suddenly, out of nowhere, they are just everywhere. Masses and masses of them, the heavy heads drooping by evening, full blooms bigger than a baby's head. The day I went into labor with my daughter, I went out and bought a blue hydrangea, one of those where the blue is so blue that it makes your teeth ache, and so now I am even more attached to them than I was before, which is to say that we should be announcing our engagement any day now. In addition to having a lot of personality, the hydrangea have a trump card: they are so robust, so determined, that they can withstand the rain. Because folks, the rain? It is coming.
To be continued...
Once a good hard rain finally washes away the last of the sakura and the stink of hanami booze clears from the trains, the peonies appear. The neighborhood bushes get sticky and covered in ants, while the flower shop buckets are full of ridiculously tiny hard knobs on top of leafy stems. The peonies look less like flowers than like lollipops that've been licked almost all the way down. And not very good lollipops, either; they're an unappealing greenish brown. But good heavens. The tight orbs open up into luscious petaled pillows of color. The peonies by my building are a deep magenta, and over the course of several days the flowers will fade to a pale pink. But my absolute favorite are the white ones with the tiny little splotch of crimson in the middle.
This is all usually happening around Golden Week, when the whole world shuts down and you want to stay off the highways if at all possible. Naturally no one in my family has the sense to do this; we usually trip off gaily on a trip, which means that we spend hours and hours stuck in traffic. Luckily, there is a lot to see from Japanese highways. On our recent trip north, we saw farmers crouching in wet paddies planting this year's rice crop, and every field and meadow was running wild with the pale yellow of nanohana, rape seed, part of the lowly mustard family.
Back in Tokyo, the wooden arbors that stand ugly and naked in the corner park are dripping, absolutely dripping, with pale purple fuji, a wisteria variant. The fragrance is enough to make you drunk, much like the beautiful empty cans of chuhai (lethal wine coolers) that also adorn the park.
The one floral treat missing from my immediate vicinity is banks of iris. They're famous in Japan, the haughty fashion models of the flower kingdom, and there are specific dates at specific gardens when you have to buy tickets in advance and stand in line and peer over your neighbors' shoulders just to catch a glimpse. Being inherently lazy, I haven't actually made it to one of these iris extravaganzas. But I have seen the impressive scenes on some very pedigreed calendars, and I'm sure they are worth the wait and the crowds and the aching feet. But until I get more motivated and organized, I'll just admire the one spindly stalk rearing up out of the Styrofoam box in front of my local pharmacy. It is a deep royal purple and has more flounces and attitude than any runway waif.
Besides, I have more urgent matters at hand: the hydrangea. The stippled cat paws of pale green are starting to flash little teasing hints of blue or pink or purple, and then, suddenly, out of nowhere, they are just everywhere. Masses and masses of them, the heavy heads drooping by evening, full blooms bigger than a baby's head. The day I went into labor with my daughter, I went out and bought a blue hydrangea, one of those where the blue is so blue that it makes your teeth ache, and so now I am even more attached to them than I was before, which is to say that we should be announcing our engagement any day now. In addition to having a lot of personality, the hydrangea have a trump card: they are so robust, so determined, that they can withstand the rain. Because folks, the rain? It is coming.
To be continued...
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