Daylight to the Rescue

Daylight Savings Time just happened two days ago.  It’s such a phrase, when you think of it: Daylight. Savings. Time. Daylight saving time. Daylight is saving time. To me it doesn’t mean that it’s saving us time: making us more efficient and helping us do things faster. To me daylight saving time means the light is saving us from feeling like time is short, dark and stopped.  It’s the time that the daylight saved us. I picture the sun with a cape and a superhero badge with a capital “D” in bubble letters. And I can tell you, around here it really does feel like the daylight saved us. I got a literal thrill of happiness yesterday when I realized it was after six o’clock and still light out. It was such a thrill I became convinced I was actually suffering from S.A.D. all winter and didn’t even know it. Humans need light. Maybe that’s the way we are most like the plants around us.

So with this expansion of light and lightness, I of course have spent much more time looking intently for those harbingers of spring: buds, emerging shoots, even—joy of joys—some camellia and early narcissus beginning to bloom.  Yes! This morning after dropping my son at the bus I returned home and saw that the familiar dusky-maroon stalks of peony had emerged, and were now about three inches high. They always remind me of young celery in this early phase, only in a red colorway. The lemon tree that sits year-round in our enclosed front porch is speckled with buds that swell by the day. The roses are sending out their reddish baby leaves; such signs of the explosive growth and beauty to come. Rhododendrons are laden with chubby, pinecone-sized buds that show just an ankle here, a slit there, of their vibrant colors, while remaining otherwise tight fists of yellow-green. Their time will come, but others get the stage first. There’s much to admire about nature’s slow rolls of advancement, giving everyone their turn in the sun.

From a floral design standpoint, there’s a sense of relief, of expansion, of possibility. The blossoming spring branches that are soon to come create compositions in the mind. The ranunculus have me searching through my stock for those just-right vessels to showcase them at their wild, twisty best. The fringed tulips and ever-increasing variety of daffodils create that pulse of interest—that desire to create—that a canvas and paints would do.

And then there are the seedlings. Every January, after the holidays are over and our adult children have returned to their lives, I pull out the beds and side tables from our downstairs bedroom. I clear it of everything, and then my husband and I pull the wire shelves out of storage and assemble them once again. I dust off the grow lights, reconnect the wires, and hang them with cord from the shelves. It’s a very low-tech operation. I plug them in and our basement bedroom window once again glows with that blue-white light of things being grown.

This spring we will be starting the Parsley & Rue Floriography gardens: growing flowers on a dear friend’s Snohomish property--that are grown not just for their beauty, but for their meanings as well.  There will be courage growing there, and resilience, support, joy, friendship, and lots and lots of versions of love. There will be flowers that represent strength: that meaning that is so asked-for lately by clients. There will be wit and intellect and grace. And the three hundred or so plants I currently have growing in our downstairs bedroom are the start of it all. I have a lot riding on them. But I try not to let them know.  As I water I tell them how fantastically they’re growing; how wonderful and strong they look. I tell them they’re doing great, and I’m so impressed. Basically I’m their hype-girl 24/7.  And in return they have flourished (well, except for the Lisianthus.  There’s always that one…..)

It’s hard to explain the feeling I get when I plant seeds, and just a few days later I open the door to the bedroom and there they are: tiny green sprouts. No helpless newborns, these: they are rip-roaring extroverts in their burst out of the seedcase and immediate reach for the light—much more akin to those quick-on-their-feet babies:  horse, giraffe, deer, zebra, caribou. The miracle is never lost on me.  I planted this tiny seed and it turned into this sprout, which will become a 4’ plant with boundless blooms. Incredible. Absolutely amazing. What a gift. What an inspiration.

And forgiving, too.  Every year I’m so itching to start seeds that I pounce on those that need 10-12 weeks to grow and get them started.  But then, inevitably, life gets very busy and my seed sowing schedule flounders. In February I left on Valentine’s Day (last flower order leaving my hands seconds before we left for the airport) to fly to New York City to see our dancer-daughter perform. Another of our daughters took care of the seedlings, watering, turning the lights on and off, keeping them alive. I texted her from NYC to ask not about our two dogs, but about the seedlings: how were they doing? I think I see growth! She texted back. Such music to a seed-sowers ears: growth. That’s all we wish for them; all we want for them.

So I’m late to start many seeds. The packets that I organized and labelled and bundled in November and December, when I was dying to be gardening, still sit in their basket, waiting. I know I’ll get to them soon: using my floral studio as a seed-sowing studio for a day, filling the trays with seed-starting soil, putting on my glasses so I can see what I’m doing as I place each often-miniscule seed in each cell. I cover them with vermiculite, press them down, water them inexpertly, often displacing a few seeds, and carry them down to the basement. When I slip them under the grow lights and see the soil brighten under the glow, I swear I can feel the seeds saying thank you. You took awhile, but you did it. Good job. Now relax: we’ve got this. Seeds sown a few weeks too late are still seeds, and they still grow. Becoming a gardener, and then a flower farmer, and then a florist has been very instrumental in teaching me to not be so punishingly exact. I don’t and won’t do things perfectly. It's okay.

As of this morning, the Hollyhocks are three inches high with big, broad curvy leaves. The snapdragons are robust. The verbena are shorter, but since I pricked them out and replanted them in potting soil, with room to spread their roots, they are picking up speed. The Lisianthus have all failed, and I pulled their trays and will be using them soon to sow something else. I received an email this morning that my first order of dahlia tubers are en route. I’m not ready for them: I had planned for the plots at my friend’s property to be ready by now: tilled just once, amended, with stakes, hoops and cover cloth at the ready, and irrigation neatly set. But instead last weekend we did everything but that. And now the tubers are on their way. So I will be late, and hustling, but I’ll get it ready. The tubers will get in the ground. And I will put up my first crop markers for the dahlia with not just their varietal, but with their meaning:  steadfast. Spring, Seedlings, Floriography Gardens: more daylight makes it feel so much easier to remain exactly that: steadfast.