Sensei and Sensibility

MORE ON THE FLOWER SHOW

The flower show is made up of three halls:  the first is that of landscape and floral displays; the second is for education and individual displays; the third is for the marketplace.  Sybil and I made our way to all three.

The Hall of Education and Individual Displays was where we went to find experts who could tell Sybil what to do with her begonia.  We talked to several people.  Advice ranged from "you may be watering it too much--or maybe not enough" to questions about its placement in the house.  Our "take-away" was to try something and pay attention to what happens!

In this second part of the show, judges were awarding ribbons for plants, flower arrangements, displays in window boxes, balconies and front porch gardens and more.  (The front porch gardens made me wish I had a front porch!)  

The whole of the flower show is a celebration of horticultural excellence--and what a celebration it is!  

PHILADELPHIA INTERNATIONAL FLOWER SHOW: HARBINGER OF SPRING

My friend, Sybil, and I went to the Philadelphia International Flower Show on Monday.  It was just the "tonic" we needed/wanted.

The first thing to catch our eye upon entering the conference center was a hot-air balloon floating 28 feet off the ground. We noticed the globe of the world and discovered, as we got closer, that eighty thousand dried flowers had been used to cover the balloon which introduces visitors to the "Explorer's Garden."  (This extraordinary garden features exotic plants collected from around the world, including some introduced to the show in 1829!) 

Six showcase gardens surround the Explorer's Garden, each from a horticulturally diverse corner of the globe.  These gardens supply the fantasy which is a significant part of the show. The first we visited was a recreation of a village in South Africa.  The exhibit features beehive huts, a life-size giraffe and lion, flocks of birds on overhead branches, 20 wildly interpretive masks and more.  I was swept away with this exhibit.  I loved it!

Though we found the spring flowers we long to see, among them crocuses, daffodils, tulips, azaleas and rhododendron, we also found bright bromeliads, heliconias, begonias and anthuriums, flowers from the rainforest areas of Brazil.  (This year "International" has been added to the name of the show, after all.)

Other special gardens included a traditional Indian wedding scene, New Zealand gardens, Singapore gardens and a garden from the Netherlands.  The latter included lots of tulips and abandoned bicycles in the canal! 

The theme of this year's Philadelphia International Flower Show, Passport to the World, appeals to the tourist in all of us.  What could be better than a whirlwind visit of global gardens?   After so many weeks of winter, we are vulnerable to the fantasy and eager for the facts.  And, truth be told, the offerings are dazzling.  

AN EXALTATION OF LARKS

At a recent visit to my dentist, I saw a book with an intriguing title:  An Exaltation of Larks.  With curiosity piqued, I read on.  Other "nouns of multitude" on the cover included an ostentation of peacocks; a skulk of foxes; a shrewdness of apes; a leap of leopards; a score of bachelors; an unction of undertakers; a click of photographers; a wince of dentists; a lot of realtors "and 1000 more group terms, real and fanciful, from the 15th to the 21st centuries." Without opening the book, I took out paper and pen to record the book's title and author.  I knew this was a book I wanted to own.

The author calls "nouns of assemblage," "terms of venery."  The etymology of venery shows it to be a word that signifies the hunt.  It was so used in early works on the chase, including the earliest known on English hunting. 

Author James Lipton lists six Families in the Order of such words:  

     -Onomatopoeia, as in a murmuration of starlings or a gaggle of geese.

     -Characteristic, as in a leap of leopards or a skulk of foxes.

     -Appearance, as in a knot of toads or a parliament of owls.

     -Habitat, as in a shoal of bass or a nest of rabbits.

     -Comment (pro or con, reflecting the observer's point of view), as in a richness of martens or a cowardice of curs.

     -Error (resulting from an incorrect transcription of a scribe or printer and subsequently preserved), as in a school of fish, originally "shoal."

This book contains lists from Academe to Zoology--and more.  I recommend it, with enthusiasm!  It is splendid fun.

CATKINS, HARBINGER OF SPRING

Furry catkins, one of the earliest signs of spring, are a key ingredient in this arrangement that welcomes the coming of March--and with it the coming of spring!

ON TRAVELERS, A 'NATION' WITHOUT FRONTIERS

Travelers have been a nation of a special kind, without frontiers.  As travel becomes no longer a mere distraction but an essential part of a whole person's diet, travelers are becoming the largest nation in the world.  This notion, which I discovered in Theodore Zeldin's book, An Intimate History of Humanity, was the seed for a conversation nine of us engaged in earlier this week in my home.

Travelers distinguish themselves from tourists, though being tourists is not something we rejected out of hand. There are times when being a tourist in New York City, for example, is grand, and we enjoy it.

Over a century ago the historian Hippolyte Taine (1828-93)said there were six kinds of tourists.  The first travel for the pleasure of moving absorbed in counting the distance they have covered.  The second go with a guide book, from which they never separate themselves.... The third travel only in groups, or with their families, trying to avoid strange foods, concentrating on saving money.  The fourth have only one purpose, to eat.  The fifth are hunters, seeking particular objects, rare antiques or plants.  And finally there are those who look at the mountain from their hotel window..., enjoy their siesta and read their newspaper lounging in a chair, after which they say they have seen the Pyrenees.

People may opt to repeat some or all of these routines.  And there are other possibilities. Travel is also the discovery of people with the transformation of both the visitor and the host as reward. 

There was one ground rule for our conversation on travel.  In the manner of a traveler to a foreign place, participants were invited to "listen for what is new, what is different and what surprises you."

Though we began our conversation thinking travel required us to go abroad, we discovered we had "travel" experiences much closer to home, and they came early.  One woman described their family move from Vermont to Carolina when she was in third grade.  She recalled vividly the experience of "other" at that young age.  Another described his "culture shock" in moving from New York to Florida as a seven-year-old. 

These experiences (and more) were followed with travel to more and more distant places.  In New York, we are experiencing the diversity of travelers who come here.  We know, in the role of visitor or host, travel is so much a matter of giving and receiving, whether in far away places or closer to home.  

Travel is also a matter of noticing.  When we become able to set foot on our own land and notice it as in a place foreign, then still another of the objects of travel has been achieved.

There is more to be discovered in terms of the possibilities that may reside in the developing "Nation of Travelers."   It is a captivating question, one I plan to carry with me.

READER ERMA YOST ADDS TO OUR KNOWING OF "WINTER-GREEN"

After reading the recent blog with the Marie Ponsot poem, Erma Yost, artist, bird lover, blog reader and more, sent a picture of ground cover her husband, Leon, planted last summer at their home in Pennsylvania.  Erma wrote, "It's name is 'Wintergreen' and the leaves have the strong Wintergreen fragrance.  In the fall, it makes berries the size of cherries.  Thankfully, Leon planted several dozen plants of it because the birds love it.  Right now it is under about 30" of snow, so it was fun to find this photo.  Let's hope it survives."

I might have suspected there would be a wintergreen plant, but I didn't think to look for one.  After hearing from Erma, I discovered wintergreen is a group of cold-hardy, shrub-like plants that remain green throughout the winter.  I also learned that North American Indians used a tea prepared from the leaves of wintergreen, this for disorders of joints, muscles and rheumatism.  Later, American nationals, who boycotted British tea during the American Revolution, used wintergreen tea as a substitute.  Eventually, they used the tea to curb headache, muscle pains and colds.  (These little known facts, LKFs, add their own kind of pleasure!)

Today?  Wintergreen serves as a staple during winter months for animals like the deer and partridge.  

Erma, I thank you for bringing new awareness, knowing and appreciation to Ponsot's description: Time is winter-green. 

SNOW PICTURES ARE WHERE YOU FIND THEM

This "snow" picture was taken in the Charles Engelhard Courtyard of the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum.  It subsequently became a Valentine greeting sent to friends.
 

"THE SUN FEELS DIFFERENT TODAY. . . ."

A friend wrote this morning with the observation, "The sun feels different today...." I, too, noticed some special stirring and brought home my first daffodils of winter.

ON NOTICING, NOT ANTICIPATING

Last Sunday I was surprised and delighted to notice this promise of spring.  Even as a patch of snow remained, I noticed the emerging tips of these bulbs.  In the days since, I've discovered more growing tips, all with delight.
  

There was a time when I would have said I was anticipating spring.  However, I've come to know that isn't the case.  Anticipation eliminates discovery.  Anticipation is to "know" something before noticing what is actually there.  Expectancy, on the other hand, makes room for noticing, for noticing possibilities, whatever they may be. 

MARIE PONSOT, A POET NEW TO ME

Recently I was gifted with a collection of Marie Ponsot's poems entitled Easy. What a gift it has proven to be! 

First, I've been introduced to a poet new to me, and I always enjoy that.   Marie Ponsot, now in her late eighties, lives in New York City and continues to teach poetry at the Unterberg Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y and at the New School University. Perhaps most winningly, Marie Ponsot views her life in poetry as easeful.  

This morning I found the following poem, untitled:  

Time is winter-green.

Seeds keep time.

Time, so kept, carries us

across a no-time where

no time is lost.

Green, even in winter, is full of the energy and direction of growth, urgent on its journey towards the light.  Time that is "winter-green" suggests that time is like that, too.  

I've never thought of time as "winter-green" nor of "seeds keeping time," but that's the beauty of the poet's seeing.  Ponsot sees time, seeds and the emptiness, the in-between world.

I'm carrying this poem like a seed in my pocket, a seed whose possibilities aren't fully apparent, not yet.