flowers | Minnesota Prairie Roots

My tomatoes are planted and now I have to worry about snow May 7, 2010

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 9:30 AM
Tags: flowers, gardening, weather

Marguerite sweet potato vine, Rose Morn Madness petunias and a sun-loving coleus fill one of 10 flower pots in my back yard. These are planted in a calf pail. Former farm girls, you'll understand.

WHAT’S WITH THE WEATHER here in Minnesota?

First, April comes and goes with unseasonably warm temperatures and lots of sunshine. Now May arrives with temps so cold that snow and frost are in the forecast.

It seems many of us, including me, were tricked in to believing that spring had arrived. Like many Minnesotans, I’m now scrambling to protect the tender young plants I prematurely planted outdoors.

For days, I have been lugging heavy, flower-filled pots into the garage at night and back outside in the morning. In and out, in and out. It’s back-breaking work. But I’m not about to lose those plants to frost. So my husband and I haul the pots inside and cover tomatoes and flowers with buckets and blankets.

All of this could have been avoided if only I had listened to my elders. You see, on Sunday while shopping at the Faribault Garden Center, I asked a seasoned gardener if it was too early to plant tomatoes.

He advised me to wait until the end of May. Foolish me. I didn’t listen.

Last summer I was introduced to, and fell in love with, Diamond Frost. I like the airy look of this plant with the tiny white flowers. Here I've mixed it with a Contessa Purple (Black Magic) ivy geranium, pink Superbells and Quartz Creek Soft Rush grass.

My husband found this Easy Wave violet petunia. I love the blue tinge at the edge of the blossoms. It's the perfect fit for my favorite flower colors--purple, pink, shades of burgundy and yellow.

For height, I picked out a grass that will grow into waving purple plumes. The ivy will spill over the pot. And Burgundy Madness petunias add just the right splash of color in a huge blue pot.

I can't wait until all of these flowers are in bloom. I replicated a planting I saw at Donahue's Greenhouse in Faribault. Included are Sunsatia lemon nemesia, Superbells Yellow Chiffon, Lemon Symphony Osteospermum and Supertunia Citrus. All flowers are in varying shades of yellows. Just the names of the plants drew me to them.

I combined Rose Morn Madness petunias and sweet-smelling purple Heliotrope in this clay flower pot.

Comments (6)

Iris May 3, 2010

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 9:22 AM
Tags: flowers, gardening, iris, photography

SOMETIMES, NATURE NEEDS few words to define her beauty.

Close-up of an iris bud

Iris buds

A clutch of iris buds

Iris buds and iris blooming

An iris in bloom

Comments (2)

Joy in a memory garden April 27, 2010

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 8:16 AM
Tags: family, flowers, garden

Valentina's memory garden

MY FRIEND JOY lives up to her name.

Everything about her speaks to pure joyfulness. She’s always positive, happy, industrious, creating, caring, giving…

So Sunday, when I stop briefly at Joy’s house to shoot photos for a church project, I am taken with the evolving garden she is designing in honor of her granddaughter Valentina. With Joy, everything is a work in progress.

The memory garden, ringed with stones and rocks, is a testament to a grandmother’s love for the sweet baby girl who died two days after birth in 2006. Valentina’s twin, Samantha, lived.

Joy first showed me this developing memory garden several years ago. On this day, I am treated to a circle of blooming blue hyacinths and a cluster of blossoming white tulips. Also scattered in the hard soil are a few lonely white pansies. A white-budded tree hydrangea grows as a focal point inside the circle.

Joy’s garden, admittedly, needs some upkeep with dandelions and other weeds creeping into the space. But it’s easy to overlook that and focus on the love and thought that went into this small spot of earth.

My eyes gravitate to the word “COURAGE” that centers this garden.

“Why courage?” I ask.

Joy explains that Valentina means courage.

I marvel at how Joy crafted Brazilian agates into letters—C-O-U-R-A-G-E—carefully placing the stones into concrete. I also marvel at how this determined grandmother and her son Dan, Valentina’s father, hauled hefty bags of Brazilian stones onto airliners and back to Minnesota so Joy could incorporate Valentina’s homeland into this memory garden.

There is so much love here, in this spot, in this earth. And even though Dan lives today in Brazil with his family, back in Minnesota, one grandmother holds close her precious granddaughter in a garden that exudes courage and joy.

Dandelions mingle with hyacinths in Valentina's memory garden. The rusted scissors adds interest. "I never throw anything away," Joy says.

Joy formed COURAGE from Brazilian stones.

Looking down into a cluster of blooming hyacinths.

Comments (2)

Oh, sweet Friday morning surprises April 23, 2010

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 9:19 AM
Tags: family, flowers, surprises

A just-opened iris in my backyard.

I LOVE MORNINGS like this, which begin with simple surprises.

When I pull the shade on my south bedroom window, my eyes linger on a patch of yellow that wasn’t there yesterday. I grab my glasses and see that an iris is blooming.

Later, after I’ve hung my first load of laundry on the clothesline, I stroll over to the backyard flowerbed, to that spot of yellow, and admire the arching petals and the lavender beards that define this plant.

On my way back toward the house, I sidestep a hint of purple, a tiny wild violet peeking through the blades of grass.

Back inside, I settle in at my computer, open my e-mail and find an uplifting note from my friend Virgil. He’s caught up on my blog posts, he says, and adds, “fun reading the articles and I like the flower pictures!”

Virgil, like me, appreciates flowers. He’s a retired science teacher and a grower of Asiatic lilies and gladioli. I’ve, more than once, been the happy recipient of his floral bouquets.

I also open two forwards (typically I don’t open forwards) from Virgil—one a humorous piece about the English language and the other an inspirational story about a pro-golfer who, unlike Tiger Woods, is devoted to his cancer-stricken wife.

And then, as I’m still smiling at my friend’s messages, my teenage son gallops down the stairs. “Mom, can I have a hug?” he asks, already extending his gangly arms toward me. I nearly leap from my office chair, stretching my arms heavenward to embrace this growing child of mine.

As I wrap my arms around my 16-year-old, I relish the moment. He does not always welcome my hugs. But now, for this moment, this morning, I hold him close. I feel his body, still warm from the blankets that cocooned him through the night. I place a gentle mother’s kiss upon his cheek.

Then, before he leaves for school, my boy hugs me again, twice. I plant another kiss upon his left cheek. He slides his hand up, as he always does, and swipes his palm across his cheek, wiping away my kiss.

“I love you,” I say.

He turns, without a word. The door slams shut behind him.

Iris close-up

Spring’s beauty, through my camera lens April 20, 2010

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 9:20 AM
Tags: flowers, Minnesota, photography, weather

Wild purple violet

FOR THOSE OF US who live in Minnesota, where winter can last six to seven months, this year’s early arrival of spring has been greeted with nothing short of elation.

No snow fell here during the entire month of March, typically one of our snowiest months, if not the snowiest.

And so far this April, not a single flake. I think we are all perhaps holding our collective breath wondering if this is all too good to be true.

For now, though, I am enjoying every facet of spring from the sunshine to the 70-degree temps to the budding plants and chirping birds.

To truly embrace spring, though, you need to get up close to nature. Don’t just look, but see. For me, that’s best done through the lens of my Canon EOS 20D digital camera.

Join me in my backyard. Bend and lean in close. See the veins in the flowers, the blades of grass, the shades of blue, purple and pink…

Don’t simply look at spring. See it.