By Anna Kunnecke
On the heels of the hydrangea is the rain. It is relentless. Lots of flowers are blooming, sure, and the greens are so green that your eyes start to pulsate a little bit, but none of that matters very much because what flowers the most is the mold. And the mildew. And the little pockets of dank nastiness that breed in even the most pristine house. And just when you are ready to throw yourself on the ground and wish yourself to Kansas--the rain, egads the rain, my nerves are bleeding--it stops. And then it gets hot. Hot, oh my lord, so hot and so humid that the people are like steamed asparagus. We turn bright green, we wilt, we fall over. You'll have to forgive me for not mentioning the orgy of black-eyed-susans, Echinacea, and everything else going on outside mid-summer because I am spending most of my time pressed to the cool hardwood floor, moaning.
But I hear that there are some pretty amazing lilies and lotus that bloom in the summer, if you like hanging around ponds, which unfortunately have more mosquitoes than flowers, so I don't. And the climbing roses and bouganvilla are just going crazy at this point, they're so full and lush that you start to believe you live in a tropical country (which, depending on how you define things, you sort of do). And the bamboo shoots up; one little stray sprout can take over your entire house, if you're not careful. One morning you might wake up and find that you and your whole family are teetering sixteen feet up in the air, propelled by a mighty strand of bamboo. What's that? Delirious? Well of course I'm delirious, in my imagination it's August.
But then September comes around, and while it's still hot, it's not quite AS hot. And this is one of the best seasons to live in my building, because all around us my neighbors have been nurturing their dahlias. I think that they must feeds them stray cats at night. There seems to be an underground competition, and I don't know the rules, but suddenly one week all the pots and styrofoam crates in my neighborhood are preening with these unbelievable dahlias. They look like blow-up dolls, they're so overbalanced that it seems impossible that they are actually standing up, these crazy intricate dinner plates of petals in deep purples and reds, tawny golds and pinks, and regal white.
And at the other end of the spectrum, one step above a weed, are the cosmos, those ethereal floaty things, purple and white and every shade of pink in between, and you can buy them at every little shop in rough gathered bunches for a dollar or two. They never last indoors for more than a day, and they drop yellow pollen all over tarnation, but there is something so homey and sweet and even melancholy about them.
They are the sign that it will soon be fall. And then one day you are walking wearily through your neighborhood thinking that global warming is here now, it's irreversible, and it will never get cool again, and you smell a fragrance. It's the kinmokusei, these teeny tiny little orange blossoms that are impossible to spot until they fall to the ground, and are called sweet olive, tea olive, or fragrant olive in English. These diminutive flowers have an immense presence. Their waxy fragrance smells exactly like the lipsticks that my grandmother used to keep in her dressing table. Just exactly. And it's enough to keep you going, because soon there will be lindo in the shops, those vibrant blue bolt upright Japanese gentians, and mists of thistle and those tiny brown pinecones on spiderwebs, which I have yet to learn the name of, and which remain elusive and mysterious. But not quite yet.
To be continued...
On the heels of the hydrangea is the rain. It is relentless. Lots of flowers are blooming, sure, and the greens are so green that your eyes start to pulsate a little bit, but none of that matters very much because what flowers the most is the mold. And the mildew. And the little pockets of dank nastiness that breed in even the most pristine house. And just when you are ready to throw yourself on the ground and wish yourself to Kansas--the rain, egads the rain, my nerves are bleeding--it stops. And then it gets hot. Hot, oh my lord, so hot and so humid that the people are like steamed asparagus. We turn bright green, we wilt, we fall over. You'll have to forgive me for not mentioning the orgy of black-eyed-susans, Echinacea, and everything else going on outside mid-summer because I am spending most of my time pressed to the cool hardwood floor, moaning.
But I hear that there are some pretty amazing lilies and lotus that bloom in the summer, if you like hanging around ponds, which unfortunately have more mosquitoes than flowers, so I don't. And the climbing roses and bouganvilla are just going crazy at this point, they're so full and lush that you start to believe you live in a tropical country (which, depending on how you define things, you sort of do). And the bamboo shoots up; one little stray sprout can take over your entire house, if you're not careful. One morning you might wake up and find that you and your whole family are teetering sixteen feet up in the air, propelled by a mighty strand of bamboo. What's that? Delirious? Well of course I'm delirious, in my imagination it's August.
But then September comes around, and while it's still hot, it's not quite AS hot. And this is one of the best seasons to live in my building, because all around us my neighbors have been nurturing their dahlias. I think that they must feeds them stray cats at night. There seems to be an underground competition, and I don't know the rules, but suddenly one week all the pots and styrofoam crates in my neighborhood are preening with these unbelievable dahlias. They look like blow-up dolls, they're so overbalanced that it seems impossible that they are actually standing up, these crazy intricate dinner plates of petals in deep purples and reds, tawny golds and pinks, and regal white.
And at the other end of the spectrum, one step above a weed, are the cosmos, those ethereal floaty things, purple and white and every shade of pink in between, and you can buy them at every little shop in rough gathered bunches for a dollar or two. They never last indoors for more than a day, and they drop yellow pollen all over tarnation, but there is something so homey and sweet and even melancholy about them.
They are the sign that it will soon be fall. And then one day you are walking wearily through your neighborhood thinking that global warming is here now, it's irreversible, and it will never get cool again, and you smell a fragrance. It's the kinmokusei, these teeny tiny little orange blossoms that are impossible to spot until they fall to the ground, and are called sweet olive, tea olive, or fragrant olive in English. These diminutive flowers have an immense presence. Their waxy fragrance smells exactly like the lipsticks that my grandmother used to keep in her dressing table. Just exactly. And it's enough to keep you going, because soon there will be lindo in the shops, those vibrant blue bolt upright Japanese gentians, and mists of thistle and those tiny brown pinecones on spiderwebs, which I have yet to learn the name of, and which remain elusive and mysterious. But not quite yet.
To be continued...
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