On Ridge Road - down in someone's back yard, near a small watercourse I spied
a vivid yellow forsythia and a delicate, white flowered weeping cherry tree. Lovely.
.
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Our world upended last year, with the coming of covid-19. Suddenly people were staying home. Few vehicles on the road, occasionally an infrequent person walking. Here in New Jersey we were told to shelter in place. Essential stores: grocery, pharmacy, and a few others - were open. Having waffled for days about the situation - yes I'll go out / no I'll stay home. Starting in March, month by month, Paul would drive me in a loop around town to photograph flowers.
Now it is a different year. Life is still betwixt and between. Public gardens are slowly reopening but with timed entry tickets that must be ordered in advance. Horticultural lectures and classes are zoomed, or webinars. And I am again going around town to see what is in flower.
Flowers Around Town, in April
April 2021
Friday, 9 April 2021
On Ridge Road - down in someone's back yard, near a small watercourse I spied
a vivid yellow forsythia and a delicate, white flowered weeping cherry tree. Lovely.
.
As I feared. On the left, the saucer magnolia on Ridge Road that I photographed on 2 April.
Temperatures in the mid-teens Fahrenheit the night of 4 April. Poor frosted flowers, alas.
Wednesday, 7 April 2021
There is a saucer magnolia on the corner of Mine and Park Street in Flemington.
A semi-protected location that minimized frost damage to the opening flowers.
Cities are, you know, heat islands that stay warmer than the semi-rural exurbs.
The same property has these tousled, raggedy double flowered daffodils. It is,
I am quite sure, Narcissus 'Van Sion', also known as 'Telemonius Plenus'.
Its first appearance in England is that chronicled by Parkinson, who tells in the Paradisus [Paradisi in sole paradisus terrestris] that Vincent Sion, a Fleming, living in London, cherished it in his garden for many years before it flowered in the year 1620. He thought that John de Frauqueville might have given him the bulb, but that worthy disclaimed the honor, never having seen the like before. Before his death Van Sion gave bulbs to George Wilmer of Stratford Bowe, and also to Parkinson, who seems somewhat aggrieved that Wilmer 'would need appropriate it to himself, as if he were the first founder thereof, and call it by his own name Wilmer's Double Daffodil, which since hath so continued.' from "A Handbook of Narcissus" by E.A. Bowles, 1934.
Tuesday, 6 April 2021
A frothy luxuriance of star magnolia at the Flemington Women's Club on Park Street.
Which has next to it a cascading flowering cherry with billows of delicate pink blossoms
that toss and shimmy with each passing breeze.
Monday, 5 April 2021
A flowering cherry on Ridge Road close to Route 519, just opening its topmost flowers.
Last night was quite cold, with temperatures down in the mid-teens.
That is obviously colder than the early appearing flower can tolerate.
This is a different tree, also on Ridge Road, than the one from Friday.
Friday, 2 April 2021
A stately saucer magnolia, Magnolia ×soulangeana on Ridge Road.
Not yet open but showing a strong flush of color on its numerous flower buds.
Someone has planted daffodils along Ridge Road, bringing a smile to my face.
A good naturalizer, I think they are Narcissus 'Flower Record', originated in 1940.
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