flowers

Late Bloomer

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: A particularly prized photo is winging its way to me, but has not yet arrived and we are at the very tip of the holiday season and related posts. So today I devote a bit of space to an odd post, my fondness for amaryllis bulbs, the seasonal floral herald of the holidays.

For those of you who have not dabbled in them, these bulbs are a very hardy and easily grown indoor variety which appear this time of the year. Among the bulbs that can be “forced” and potted inside, the amaryllis appears for the holidays. It shares a bit of shelf space with a small selection perhaps of paperwhites maybe some daffodils, but largely this time of the year it dominates. I say, race to the store and buy one now.

The charm of them is that not only are they easy to grow, but they shoot up so fast you can almost imagine you can see it grow daily. Then, out of a huge green shoot emerges usually several large blooms which unfold with similar drama. They continue to bloom and hold their flower for a long time. In a small way, I think it is hard to be unhappy in the face of an amaryllis on a sunny window sill. I guess there must be duds, but I can’t really think of a time one didn’t perform for me.

It seems our bulbs are a hybrid of a species that grows native in South and Central America and the Caribbean. I guess folks grow them outside here, but that is not how I think of them, nor do I even know what time of the year they would reveal themselves outside.

Left to their own devices they will bloom in spring and have to be encouraged to a December bloom instead.

The name comes from a Greek legend. A young maiden named Amaryllis was trying to catch the eye of a handsome shepherd, Alteo, who only had eyes for flowers. After conferring with the gods, she pierced her heart with a golden arrow for 30 nights and finally on the last, the drops of blood that fell turned to blooms and lead him to her. She doesn’t die so all seems like a happy ending, at least as good as you get in Greek myths. It would seem that, like tulips, the it is the industriousness of the bulb growers in the Netherlands which is responsible for most of our holiday amaryllis today.

As we meander into the late winter and toward Easter tulips and daffodils will beckon to cheer us through the last of the winter stint. However the amaryllis kicks off not just the holidays, but gives us one last flower hurrah before the long dark winter ahead. This is the earliest I remember buying them. A Home Depot has just opened near my office (I love stores like Home Depot and especially Lowe’s in New Jersey, although there the fascination is buying garden supplies and plants) and I went in to have a look at lunch the other day and several different varieties were stacked all around.

The sign for the new Home Depot near work, delivered back in September and waiting for installation here.

In the past it had been my practice to purchase them as holiday gifts. I would load up on them and hand them to elderly people I visited for my work at the Met and I would bring a few to New Jersey for my mom and friends there. Whole Foods used to sell them just dipped in a bit of red wax. They were inexpensive and easy to transport. Oddly my memory is that lot had great growing and lasting power and that some even had a second bloom in them. Somehow though, by the time I was shopping for them in mid-to-late December they were hard to find. Occasionally I would order a pile from Amazon (because really, what can’t you get from Amazon?), but even there I was generally picking up the last of them.

In the past few years I have bought fewer. I had always made sure mom had a one or two, there is a large sunny window in the kitchen in New Jersey that is great for them. That was where she spent her days and I would get reports on the progress of the bulb and they brought her great joy, but after she died I drifted away from buying them. I no longer had encounters at work it was welcomed, many of those elderly friends are gone now as well.

Breck’s has a wide variety to choose from but start at about $30 a piece!

However, due to my new interest in gardening, the sites I buy bulbs from started sending me ads for them a couple of weeks ago already. (Spring bulbs from Brecks await my Thanksgiving arrival in New Jersey for planting – largely tulips. Spoiler alert for spring – and I also purchased some dahlias on sale that won’t arrive until early spring planting time.) I was tempted by their sturdy large varieties but they were very expensive, upwards of $35 a piece. For me part of the point is that they are inexpensive enough to be a nice small something for someone, a little nothing with a big pay off over several weeks of enjoyment.

Home Depot was the right price point, although the bulbs are in bulky boxes and some in nice but heavy glass containers. (Warning however, online their amaryllis wares are much pricier – in the store I was able to pick them up for about $16.) Despite being a bit weighty, I bought several and have already started handing them out, kicking off with a visit to a board member’s home yesterday. There is a pile waiting to go to New Jersey for Thanksgiving this year here in the apartment. One left at the office is earmarked for a holiday party in a few weeks.

Another pricey pretty beauty from Brecks!

Your timing has to be right as the bulbs are so anxious to get blooming that they will start even in their packaging. It is an ambitious flower!

Kim has just wandered through on his way out the door to make copies of something and informed me that Frank King, the artist behind Gasoline Alley, ultimately retired and raised amaryllis bulbs. Isn’t it sort of fascinating that a man who wrote what is essentially a real time comic strip would be so devoted to a flower that almost grows before your very eyes? Amazing!

Tulip Time: Part One

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: It’s spring time in full bloom here at Deitch Studio and I bring you a somewhat unorthodox Pictorama post about tulips today. It’s a two part post where Kim and Pam meeting of the minds post as our nascent floral interests convened this month.

I will start by saying that I have loved tulips since college where I remember seeing my first gorgeous bunch of them in someone’s room, a wonderful harbinger of spring. I think they were apricot colored and I guess the whole concept of cut flowers was very adult as well. While we grew flowers in New Jersey my mother, at that time, was not so big on harvesting them, preferring to let them run their course in the yard.

I am a big fan of vases filled with tulips, all colors and types. Trim the stems and add a couple of pennies – if in the sun or a warm spot they will force quickly. A cooler shaded spot to keep them longer.

Those yards of my youth consisted of sandy stony soil and were resistant to cultivation, despite my mother’s best efforts. As a result her purview was focused. She produced a credible vegetable and ultimately herb garden and managed to get shrubs and trees to grow, but less so bulbs of the annual variety like tulips. (Although someone gave her stunning and unusual iris bulbs which were perennial and a few of which exist in my yard today. Perhaps a future post on them.)

From my former office at Jazz. I generally had cut flowers on my desk each week.

Meanwhile, the lovely if extremely finite, nature of tulips fascinated me. I always say, there’s nothing more dead than a dead tulip. However, if true, in some ways there’s nothing more vibrant than one it its prime – their life and death cycle perhaps being part of the appeal. As plants they hit the ground running, so to speak, and once they hatch from their bulb they race to a full stem, bloom tightly folded. And then, bam! It opens. Amazing! Before you know it, the plant is spent and that’s pretty much it.

If left in the ground you can get a second showing the following year. When I worked for Central Park we had an annual Tulip Toss where the spent bulbs were dug up and replaced with fresh. The bulbs were given to smaller parks and interested individuals who would plant them the following year with a less reliable yield.

Now, I have mostly enjoyed my tulips as cut flowers indoors. However, as Pictorama readers know, I went gardener last year after inheriting the house in Fair Haven. Although I confined myself largely to herbs and veggies, one of my final acts of gardening in the fall was to plant some tulips out in the front yard.

Photo from a friend’s trip to Amsterdam this year.

As many know, a siren call to all wildlife are bulbs, seeds and flowering plants. Now, I try to take a pretty philosophical view of critters munching my blueberries and strawberries (read about that a bit here if you like), and I think mom planted the berries for the birds, but the seeds, bulbs and flowering plants (think geraniums) make me a bit sad. Anyway, understanding that it could result in spring disappointment, I planted a row of tulips and one of daffodils (less tasty it seems) in the front yard.

Our backyard is fenced and I generally do not have deer visit back there (although bunnies, chipmunks and squirrels abound, as well as myriad birds), but the front yard is fair game and can pretty much be considered a buffet for the plant munchers.

Nonetheless, I ordered some bulbs from a nursery and spent a chilly, dirty and backbreaking afternoon of planting last fall. I was a bit late getting them in which was a strike against me.

Last year’s strawberry plant. It wintered over and is laden with blooms already. The birds, bunnies and I will have strawberries galore this year.

My trips to New Jersey are somewhat sporadic and dictated by both things that need to be done there or other things which need to be done in Manhattan and keep me here. However, the women who look after the house and cats keep a weather eye on my garden as well and send frequent reports.

The tulips were not eaten as bulbs and low and behold – they came up unmolested. Now the race was on for me to get to New Jersey before a strolling four-legged resident feasted on them.

I had forgotten that I had purchased these brilliant bright orange and red ones. I zipped down to New Jersey and caught them in their full glory. So cheerful! Their straight stems and gaping blossoms opening to the sun and sky in the morning and shutting down again at night. I must say, I thoroughly enjoyed them.

I left on a Monday night and by Tuesday morning the report came – they were gone. I am so grateful that the critters waited for me, but I guess ultimately they proved to be an irresistible nosh.

By coincidence, last night I was catching up with a Frank Borzage directed film I had never seen, Seven Sweethearts. I am a huge Borzage fan and will sit down for any film of his I haven’t seen and TCM is doing a sort of mini-tribute to him this month. They appear to be focusing on the later films. (Why anyone would show Borzage and not show Lucky Star – an all-time favorite film – I have no idea. I collect stills from them and have written extensively about my love of his silent films here and here for starters.)

Charmingly artificial Borzage background on this still from Seven Sweethearts.

Now, I can’t really recommend this 1942 era film, except Katheryn Grayson (dressed of course in Dutch girl garb) is in fine voice. I wouldn’t say I didn’t enjoy it – there are some unmistakable Borzage touches including some very charming fields of faux tulips. The setting is an imaginary location called New Delft, a sleepy tourist town where some people come and never leave. Central to the town and the plot is a hotel owned by S. Z. Sakall who is Papa to seven daughters – five with sweethearts at the start of the film. Alas, none can marry until the oldest sister and she’s an aspiring actress so no interest in marriage there. You can fill in the rest. It is pretty available to be streamed online (free or nominal fee) and at the time of writing I caught it on the TCM app after a showing late on Thursday night.

All this to say tulips figure largely in the film and there are scenes, glass shots and charmingly artificial sets, of acres of tulips. I especially liked a scene where Katheryn Grayson tells Van Heflin that these tulips can tell the weather – that they close up with the darkening of the sky before the rain. It reminded me of mine, gently opening and closing in the front yard.

Last little fellow who popped up after all the others.

Meanwhile, I got a report that one lone little tulip showed up after the fact and I have the photo you can see above. Tomorrow, a bit more on the background of tulips and, oddly enough, where they intersect with comics.