In due time

In past years, I’ve regaled you with photos of snowdrops sprouting near a stone wall Reggie and I passed nearly every morning on our walks, a place where crocuses sprouted in the shade of trees that have since been felled. Now that Reggie is old, we don’t go that far on our morning walks: just around the block if the weather’s nice, and not even that when it’s wet or the footing is treacherous. When you live with an old dog, you suit your stride (and the length of your walks) to his abilities.

This year, thanks to a milder-than-usual winter, the snowdrops have come to us. I knew there was a cluster of perennial bulbs in our front yard, planted by other hands beneath the shelter of our front eaves…but most years, those snowdrops lie buried beneath a winter’s worth of snow raked from our roof. How frustrating it must be to be a cluster of snowdrops planted in a place that is perpetually piled with snow. How many years, one after the other, have these resilient plants sent up hopeful sprouts, only to hit a cold ceiling of snow?

When J and I visited the Wellesley Greenhouses this past weekend, we encountered a similar example of vegetative resilience: an otherwise ordinary-looking shingle plant that is blooming for only the second time in eleven years.

It’s a sight J and I would have normally missed, but an enthusiastic greenhouse worker pulled us aside, having noticed our cameras: “You’ll want to get a photo of this!” When, normally, would an otherwise ordinary-looking plant sprouting otherwise nondescript greenish-white flowers draw attention of a couple of amateur paparazzi? The only thing remarkable about these flowers is the simple fact that they are there. On a plant where nothing has bloomed for nine out of eleven years, this year there is something: a tiny handful of hope.

It cheers me to consider the vegetative persistence of both these plants–not exactly late bloomers, but blooms that appeared in due time. For so many years, the time wasn’t right for our front-yard snowdrops or the Wellesley College shingle plant: for so many years, these two have been quietly going about their vegetative business in the shadow of other, showier specimens. But this spring, for whatever reason, time itself has blossomed into fullness: a moment when the stars and season perfectly aligned, sending a clear signal to Bloom Now, without delay.