Spring Lilacs

Spring is gaining momentum, and there is much to share from the forest. While I sort through my photos, please enjoy this glimpse at the emerging lilac which I planted so many moons ago.

Lilacs revisited: The Lilac Tree

Last weekend, I spied these big, white blossom clusters off towards the landlady’s house, and hopped over to investigate with my camera. This beautiful tree is enormous – sort of like a great big poof ball of a tree. Try as I might, I could not determine its identity with my books, but the leaves and flower clusters seemed to resemble lilacs.

Yesterday evening, our landlady surprised us with an enormous bouquet of these overwhelmingly fragrant flowers, and solved the mystery: this is a lilac tree (as opposed to a lilac bush, which I've always called a tree). This particular lilac tree is well over one hundred years old, and still going strong!

The lilac tree is the third variety of lilac we’ve explored thus far at Arboreality. The other is the Korean lilac (also referred to as the Chinese, Manchurian, or "Miss Kim" lilac, possibly related to slightly different varieties), which we saw on Mother's Day. The Korean lilac is a dwarf lilac bush of comparable beauty and fragrance to the other lilacs we've seen.

For Mom

Happy Mother’s Day Mom! These flowers are for you!

Also, a very happy Mother's Day to Mama Jo!

Here is a little bit about the flowers for you:

The little purple ones are from my next door neighbor’s dwarf Chinese lilac bush (also called the dwarf Korean lilac). This beautiful bush began blooming in the last week or so, and it smells heavenly! Its fragrance is even stronger than the other lilacs on the farm.

Our pink-red flower looks like a rhododendron to me, but I couldn’t possibly tell you its particular species. It may be some sort of azalea, a cousin of the rhododendron.

The snowball tree you may recognize from your own gardens… I’m sure it has a real name besides “snow ball tree”, but I’ll have to work on finding that out for you.

As for the little white flowers in the grass – I have no clue what they are, but I love them! They decided to spring up under the trees a couple weeks ago, and appear to grow wild all around the farm. I am lurking with my shovel to bring some of them in closer to the cottage!

The hydrangea and the sweetgum have a wonderful little anecdote which I have been saving especially for Mother’s Day to share!

And now, A Mother's Day Story:

My landlady lost both her parents in recent years, one after the other. As with many other family members around the farm, she and her family have planted trees in their memory.

According to my landlady, in life her mother was a formidable and confident woman, while her was father a kind and soft-spoken man, an artist and craftsman. She described how her mother would always tower over her father, issuing orders which were to be followed forthwith.

In death, their story continues: for Dad, they planted the hydrangea, and for Mom, the sweetgum, which are pictured in these two final images. Mom continues to tower over Dad year in and year out, and Dad quietly opens his graceful blossoms each spring before Mom’s leaves are out in force.

* * *

To my mom, Mama Jo, and to mothers everywhere:

Happy Mother’s Day!

Lilacs

One of my favorite memories of lilacs is from a house in Kitsap County, Washington. The garden around the house in Kitsap had been manicured to suit the fancy of every fairy, elf and gnome for miles: little coves of carefully sculpted conic hedges concealed happy clumps of columbine and roses beneath tall evergreens. (Oh yeah – and there was a swing-set in the form of a castle. Excellent.)

Apple and pear trees adorned one area of the property, in front of which grew a few enormous lilac trees of pinks, purples, and whites. In springtime there, the lilac fragrance was overwhelming!

Around the farm in Pennsylvania, lilacs have to compete with the sweetness of cherries and other tree blossoms. Nonetheless, once you’re within about 100 meters of a lilac, you can smell it before you see it! My landlady has been generous enough to share some of her lilacs, and in the coming weeks I’ll be trundling over with shovel and wheel barrow to collect a few starts of my own to plant around the cottage.