blooming ovenbird Today: daffodils, Spanish bluebells, the first of the cherry blossoms, ink entering water. 260309 ... ovenbird Yellow fronds of forsythia, bearing the name of a Scottish botanist. Such a pretty name. Such a violent claiming. 260311 ... ovenbird Magnolias have shed their winter coats and their flowers dance naked in the rain. 260319 ... ovenbird Tulips. Was there ever a flower more emblematic of spring? Or one so blatantly horny? 260320 ... ovenbird Grape hyacinths, flowers held on a proud raceme, curved tepals tipped with teeth that ache when they bite into the first ice_cream cone of spring. 260321 ... ovenbird Primula. Purple against the green of thrusting leaves. 260331 ... ovenbird Bells of Ireland, with spikes of green calyxes that look for all the world like Shrek's ears, and I just can't see them any other way. 260403 ... ovenbird The maple, sifting suffering into my inflamed eyes. 260404 ... ovenbird Azalea. A pink so vibrant it seems a colour that should only exist in imagination. 260411 ... epitome of incomprehensibility Yay! I can finally join because yesterday I saw flowers outside for the first time this year: small purple crocuses outside a Pointe Claire community centre. Today, downtown, on Avenue_de_la_Musee, more purple crocuses and a small white flower that has similar leaves but the blossom looks like it's in bunches, like a hyacinth but much smaller. (I'm looking forward to the purple hyacinths on my parents' lawn - probably in about two weeks.) 260412 ... e_o_i Two purple crocuses on my parents' lawn, though: one a deep, intense colour, with an orange stamen; the other a pale lavender with a yellow stamen. 260414 ... ovenbird Camellia. So many delicate folds, like a mind turning in on itself. 260416 ... ovenbird The Rhododendron that doesn’t give a shit about the fact that there’s a fence between the yard it’s in and mine. It just grows straight through the trellised top and starts calling the bees in the most seductive voice you’ve ever heard. 260420 ... e_o_i Small blue-purple flowers, neither crocus nor violet, scattered across Oriole_Park. I'm walking my dog through them, wondering what they are. Part of me says, "Look them up now!" and part of me says, "No, it's not a good idea," but Part 1 accuses Part 2 of anxious vagueness and so the phone emerges from my bag. Shiloh likely expects me to take a picture and be done with it, but when I submit the visual data to Google, it presents me with an array of similar pictures as well as a diagnosis: Siberian squill, which sounds like something from Harry Potter. I scroll down, click on a link. Shiloh pulls, impatient. Ah yes, that's why half of me didn't want to look it up: distraction. Mom says she had a prettier name for it. Not distraction, the flower. Starflower? The pale centres are stellar and stelliform. (Not a word? Fuck it, it is now and it means star-shaped.) At home, I search Siberian squill in the old faithful Fieldbook of Natural History. It's a kind of bluebell, or a flower like it is called a bluebell. That rings a bell for Mom. A purple one. (Side note: why are purple flowers so often consigned to blueness? Granted, I said blue-purple, but why nominally lose the purple?) 260421 ... e_o_i 2024's flowers were weirdly early: crocuses and, I think, bluebells by the end of March. 2026's are late. Two-thirds of April, gone, and no blooming hyacinths yet. 260421 ... e_o_i (I just realized I wrote "my dog" but he's not actually mine. Let's just say I'm using the possessive form to indicate belonging rather than possession, as in "2024's flowers.") 260421 what's it to you? who go blather from