Susan Palmer's Exquisite Now

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  • Around the bend, an old friend and a new one

    Around the bend, an old friend and a new one

    First it was the rugosa roses. If you don’t know them, that’s a joy in store. The first time you inhale the aroma, you just sigh and say, “Now that’s a rose!” They are unique, with new plants shooting up from the roots and forming rangy beds (not everybody likes this; they do roam). The wrinkly leaves, the dense thorns. They aren’t finicky. They don’t get black spots. Perfect for the dilettante gardener.

    Last year, the day before starting our walking tour of the Stockholm Archipelago Trail, we knocked around Sodermalm, one of the island neighborhoods that make up Stockholm. It’s the best part of traveling, having no preconceived notion of what we’ll see and then stumbling onto a gem.

    I smelled the roses before I saw them. Came around a corner smiling, then stopped in wonder at the Sofia Church, surrounded by rugosa blooms. Sofia Church was built in 1906, “striking Neo-Gothic” according to a Stockholm museum website. I don’t claim to know what that means. To me it was graceful in the quiet way of a great beauty. It beckoned us in and we were lucky to arrive when a singer, pianist and bassist were practicing a lovely simple soaring song.

    This kind of serendipity resonates. I’ve encountered practicing musicians in three churches in three countries while banging around in an unscheduled way. The first time, an organist filled a mostly empty cathedral with big deep bass notes in Clermont-Ferrand, a city in the heart of the Massif Central region of France. The second time, another organist danced over the higher notes in Bologna Italy’s complex, stunning and deeply old Basilica di San Petronio, my favorite of the religious edifices I’ve wandered through. That’s a blog, or maybe a full memoir, for another day.

    We went on from the city and the Sofia Church to six days of hiking a trail across the archipelago, one that connects the disparate island sections via ferry.

    It’s a year since that trip. Going back isn’t off the table.

    Photos by Susan Palmer

  • An unexpected cut flower

    An unexpected cut flower

    There’s a reason they call them day lilies. I assumed they would make disappointing cut flowers. Who wants one that just lasts a day? What I didn’t think through until a couple of days ago was that the stalks have four or five or six buds on them. You cut one stalk, bring it in and every day you get a fresh flower.

    I am on day three of this fine lily. I have three two more buds to go. And I’m kind of excited because this seems to be the year of the day lilies in the garden. They are trumpeting their fabulousness.

    Inside and out.

    Photos by Susan Palmer

  • Dinosaurs probably ate them

    They are huge, OK? When I slip by them at night to run the garbage out, they loom well over six feet tall. Spiny tough. Love a good swamp. That’s gunnera.

    Rumor has it they date back to the Cretaceous period 100 million years ago. And by rumor, I mean scientists have found their fossilized pollen dating back that far. I can just imagine hadrosaurs — the duck-billed dinosaurs — chowing down on these guys.

    They die back to nothing in the winter. In spring, they shove furled leaves up that are tender enough to attract slugs. That doesn’t last long. They get tough fast. Imagine rhubarb on steroids. Rumor also has it that the shoots are edible. But that’s not a rumor I’d trust.

    Gunnera aren’t some weird little fetish of mine, either. All the best botanical gardens have them: Butchart up near Victoria BC; Shore Acres right here on the Oregon Coast.

    I don’t know why I love them. Walking under their sweeping leaves in the summer dark, I sometimes feel the yard is older than old. And, of course, it is.