Spring? Where?
Today is the first day of Spring, tra-la. We woke up to this—an extremely unseasonable blanket of snow. Brrr! Boudin, a sensible Cajun doggie, refused to go out in the nasty cold wet stuff. Cressie, on the other hand, with her Canadian heritage, bounded out happily. Here you see her sniffing those special snow-enhanced smells. (We did eventually coax Mr. Boo out for a brief pit stop.)
On the far right, note the white tubs we put over our tender new rose plants to protect them from this outrage. At the top leftish-center, see the little chartreuse balsa-wood birdhouse the house wrens love so dearly, heaped with snow on top. Poor shivery wrens. Ah, the joys of spring at Casa Loupas.
Our pear trees have been denuded of their blossoms and look so sad I couldn’t even bear to take a picture of them. Who knows if they will have the heart to bloom again this year?
Pear Blossoms
This is what you see when you look out the front door of Casa Loupas. Blossoming pear trees in the rain.
I think spring is officially here.
A Rose by Any Other Name
We’re awaiting two new additions to our rose family this year—one of our venerable “Peace” bushes (we had two, from which I cut the flowers I carried when The Broadcasting Legend™ and I were married) gave up the ghost this past summer and we have a spot to fill. Enter “Scentimental” and “Double Delight,” from my favorite purveyor of all things rose, David Austin Roses.
“Scentimental” is the peppermint-striped one—beautiful and unusual, with no two flowers alike. The scent is a very rich rose-spice, ergo the name.
“Double Delight” looks rather like a “Peace” that’s gone over to the dark side—deeper crimson edges to the petals and a creamy-gold heart. It also has a fabulous fragrance (one of our requirements for roses), described as both spicy and fruity.
I’m looking forward to planting these and nurturing them along, although I must say that the names “Scentimental” and “Double Delight” are not as romantic or literary as the names of some of our other roses. How can they compare with “Jude the Obscure” or “Fair Bianca” or “Eglantyne”? Once we have them settled in their new homes, we may have to re-name them so they feel comfortable with their siblings.
Roses Roses
Our antique roses are blooming like mad in these last weeks of the season (in Texas, anyway). We keep cutting them and bringing them inside, and as you can see we have half a dozen vases lined up on the kitchen counter. These are “St. Cecilia” and “Eglantyne” (the pinker ones) and “Jude the Obscure” (the gorgeous golden-pink-apricot one). The fragrances are simply stunning. There is nothing like an old-fashioned English rose for fragrance.
As you can see, we have a few (!) other plants as well. Sometimes I think it’s a tossup between the number of plants we have outdoors and the number of plants we have indoors!
My central character Rinette Leslie would have known roses somewhat similar to these—”Damascus and “Provence” roses—in the royal gardens at Edinburgh Castle and Holyroodhouse. In her unique (meaning that I’m mostly just making it up) system of floromancy, roses are classifed by scent and number of petals rather than by color as they are in the later Victorian “language of flowers.”
Attracting Butterflies
The other day when I was out taking pictures of the flowers, I saw several butterflies fluttering over the ageratum bed. I didn’t have time to set up a shot so I just held the camera out toward the flowers and clicked away a few times. A little cropping, and here’s what I ended up with:
As I worked with the picture, I thought, “Isn’t that just what I feel like? I’m the ageratum, partly fresh and richly colored, partly frazzled-y and gone to seed. But you know, the butterflies don’t care. They still flutter and light, like the strands of my new story, intrigue and death and passion, hovering just beyond my reach and then suddenly landing and connecting themselves to me.”
I suppose I’ve been particularly open to flowers-as-symbols lately, with my research into floromancy for The Silver Casket. Who would have thought I’d find it in my own back yard?
Micro-Walks
Need inspiration? Need motivation? Exercise is one of the best ways to kickstart one’s energy and creativity. (So are showers, but that’s another post.) Walking has been my exercise of choice ever since I adopted my first beagle Raffles, my much-loved companion and personal trainer for eleven years. Today I walk with Cressie and Boudin, and very inspiring and energizing it is, too.
However, sometimes my fingers hover over the keys with the next words tantalizingly close, and a long walk would actually be too much. That’s when I employ my new technique of the micro-walk—getting up from my desk and walking through the house for a minute or two, or going out into the back yard and smelling the roses (literally—our roses are blooming like crazy now that we’re having cooler weather). The trick is making the micro-walk just long enough to refresh my mind and shake my thoughts loose without being long enough to completely break my focus.
Sometimes less really is more.
The Second Duchess
Read the First Chapter
The Second Duchess is available on iBookstore!
