Tag: lilacs

Boston Flower Show

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, local fun, restaurants

My husband and I usually go to the Portland Flower Show every year, but as you many know, there best flower show exhibitwasn’t one this year. We hadn’t been to the Boston Flower Show in, um, decades, but we both had fond memories of all of it except the getting there and getting home part. We thought about going this year and were lucky enough to find a bus to drive us almost all the way there and back.

Yay! Alpine Leisure Tours. Based on our experience, I would recommend them highly.

As for the flower show, it was fine. It was smaller than we remembered. It seemed like half of the show was made up of vendors, maybe more than half, and there were fewer actual exhibits than I expected.  I only noticed one lilac! And it was half dead!

My favorite exhibit wasn’t a flower at all. It was the fountain and stone carving in the photo above. I kept going back to look at it. So beautiful.

Anyway, we had a great time being there and loved the bus ride. Our tour guide, Claire, was the best-est tour guide ever. She printed out a word search for us to do on the ride! It was hard! But I finished it! (Full disclosure: my husband thought it was easy).

The bonus was the surprise stop at Kelly’s Roast Beef on the way home. Heaven. I may have liked that part more than the flower show. What can I say? It’s all about the food.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Lilac poaching

by Karen, posted in gardening, local fun, Midlife Crisis, no fear, Turning 50

Lilacs are my favorite flower. They always have been, as far back as I can remember. My grandmother had a large white lilac bush in her back yard and it was one of my favorite things in the world when I was a little girl.

Over the years, we have had houses with varying numbers of lilac bushes on the property. At one point, my husband went all out and planted a lilac garden that included every color of lilac we’d ever seen or heard of. We had plenty of places to put them that got full sun and that were hospitable to lilacs and they thrived.  

That was the pinnacle.

Since then, our success with lilacs has been less exciting. My husband always tries to plant as many as possible, and then they either do well or they don’t.  In our present house, he made a huge effort and planted two pink lilac bushes on either side of the front door as a Mothers Day/Birthday Present for me one year. That was amazing and I love them.

And yet.

This time of year, I am overcome with a longing for many, many lilacs in many, many col0rs and want them in vases in every room in my house.

Currently, I have none.

Now I find myself trolling the streets of southern Maine, looking for lilacs in abandonned lots to poach. I have been known to go out at dawn to travel the back streets to cut lilacs from bushes that are in areas that could be construed as ‘public property’.

My husband has told me he will not bail me out when I get caught.

Lilacs

by Karen, posted in family, gardening

my absolute favorite flowers are lilacs. i cannot pass by a lilac bush without admiring them, often audibly, to the subsequent annoyance of those around me forced to listen to my tributes over, and over, and over…in a prior residence, my husband planted a lilac garden and included one of every kind of lilac he could find: pink, blue, light purple, dark purple, white-edged purple, yellow…it was amazing. since we moved from that house, we’ve had houses with a)no lilacs or b)houses with one or two tiny ones that did not flower.

this year, for my upcoming birthday, that sad story came to an end. my husband removed the existing shrubs flanking our front door that came with our house (which involved heavy machinery) and in their place he planted the two largest lilac bushes he could find, one pink, one purple. underneath he planted a smaller garden with my other favorite flowers…hyacinths and tulips. balloons were tied to the lilacs that said “happy birthday!” now, these lilacs in the picture i bought at the farmer’s market in portland last wednesday, but i consider them a harbinger… 🙂