Plant plethora

I loved this recent New Yorker cover by the French cartoonist Jean-Jacques Sempé. The woman emerges from her country home with clippers in hand to snip an armload of posies. Someone has been there ahead of her to water and otherwise tend the garden, so all she has to do is cut and arrange the flowers.

Not a bad life.

Once a year I have an ecstatic experience like this - the day after my garden helper and I have hacked back a truckload of overgrown shrubs and he has spread dark compost over the bare patches where weeds once thrived.

This morning was the morning when I was able to emerge from the house, clippers in hand, with no task before me but to snip posies for a big bouquet. Oh happy day.

Tomorrow I’ll be back to hauling hoses, deadheading, weeding, fussing.

P.S. Plants: Peony plus = perfection

Peony ‘Krinkle White’. Rose ‘Just Joey’. Now why can these blooms stay like this forever?

Oh, and they’re both fragrant.

Update: On Prairie Home Companion this weekend, Garrison Keillor mentioned peonies in his news from Lake Wobegon.  Something like: ” having a bouquet of peonies is like inviting a Las Vegas showgirl into your living room. They’re always surprising to find in a Christian home.”

I don’t have a Christian home, but peonies ARE outrageous and I welcome them.

Preservatives and Pesticides

On my birthday, which was March 21, a friend brought me a lovely bouquet of red roses. Because I was in the grip of the mid-winter grippe that flattened many around these parts, I mumbled a Puny thank you and thrust them into the closest vase I had at hand and fell back on my Pillow.

Today, eighteen (!) days later I decided it was probably time to chuck them. I don’t know WHAT kind of preservative these sucked up before I got them, but I have never ever had a rose that lasted more than a week. At one time I had a rose garden with 75 different varieties, so I’m very familiar with their tendency to wilt from the neck up or burst wide open and drop everything.

My friend bought the flowers at a local Rotary Club fundraiser; they’d had a massive order flown in from Ecuador. The stems were super long and super thick. In two and a half weeks only one wilted and none exploded or dropped.

Since I did nothing to prolong their lives, I’ve got to think they ate or drank something powerful before they left Ecuador.

According to an article from the University of Florida, I’m right.

The problems and promises of Ecuador’s flower industry are as many-layered as a rose bloom. This tiny country has gained about 60,000 jobs since the industry began two decades ago, but workers endure dangerous pesticides and low wages to keep their steady jobs.

-snip-

Roses are one of the most susceptible types of flowers to pests and disease. Because they’re not an agricultural product that’s grown to eat, importing countries don’t place strict standards on the pesticide residue they contain. The result is that pickers and processors are exposed almost daily to toxic chemicals.

Yellow-suited and gas-masked workers spray a cocktail of pesticides on each bush three times a week. … Almost every worker, when asked about the pesticides, says the same thing: “Son muy fuertes.” They’re very strong.

If you’re interested, read the whole story. Maybe you’ll decide that a rose (in its proper season) which lasts only a week is quite wonderful enough.