Lilac Season

It strikes me that liminality — over-observed by yours truly at nearly every turn — is especially evident as springtime launches her first forays into summer. And while I acknowledge that my overzealous detection might reflect more on my own psychological state than the flux of seasonality (so omnipresent in late May), I can’t resist a quick look at the liminal space of lilac season.

In the parade of ephemeral flora, lilacs (Syringa vulgaris) are more generous than others.

Lilacs typically bloom in the late spring, usually in May. The exact timing varies depending on the specific variety and the local climate, but they generally start blooming after the last spring frost. (Source: Bloom Ranch)

It’s been at least a couple of weeks since the lilacs began blooming. Unfortunately, much of that time has been rainy, dampening by a few degrees the perfect perfume of lilac season.

But, as Teddi has just reminded me upon delivering an icehouse proportioned bouquet of claret colored lilac blooms from Rosslyn’s waterfront, stronger fragrance is released when the blooms warm up. Indeed, as her lilac arrangement warms this morning, the perfume is expanding, wafting playfully up to the loft where I’m writing. In fact, the scent of lilac now competes with the scent of the lily-of-the-valley arcing from a small vase on my desk.

(Thank you, Teddi, for both!)

“This is the last of the lilacs,” Teddi predicts. She’s probably correct. So I’ll be sure to inhale deeply as hours become days.

There will be other blooms, of course. Week after week, month after month of aromatic adventures. Each will intoxicate me enough to forget the last. But lilac season, even as its perfume fades, will remain a poignant part of this revitalizing time of year and life.

Seasoning with Lilac Season

[In the photographs above my] former sailboat, Errant, moored in front of Rosslyn, [is] glimpsed — as if through a foliage keyhole — with lilacs (Syringa vulgaris) blooming extravagantly in the foreground.

The second image, almost the same as the first, expands the frame and widens the view. It includes the boathouse, a sliver of dock, and more lilac blooms.

… Slightly less than two years after snapping these pictures I would sell Errant to a nice family from Vermont. The sailboat had not been for sale. But the offer found me, and I realized it was a good time to let go. Time to find another boat. (I’m still looking.)

Boats come and go, if we’re fortunate. Like wind and waves. Lilac blooms. High lake levels that threaten the boathouse. Low lake levels that require moving the dock into deeper water. (Source: The Art of Flux)

Lilac season comes during this pronounced seasonal flux. Flora and fauna, well past their winter-into-spring awakening / reawakening, are now blooming. Boats and docks dance to the rhythm of the mercurial lake level, rising and falling with the whims of late-spring-almost-summer rains. Temperatures too fluctuate erratically as if to remind us not to anticipate, not to assume, not to miss a moment of gratitude for the beautiful days.

In addition to Rosslyn’s violet and claret waterfront lilacs and a small clump of white lilacs at the southern terminus of our front fence, two bouquets of lilacs bloom on either side of the principle gate south of the gardens and orchard.

One of several gates allowing access through the fence that encloses Rosslyn’s orchard and vegetable/fruit gardens is the focus of the images. It’s actually a pair of swinging gates that we fabricated and installed a decade and a half (or so?) ago out of homegrown, stump-to-lumber cedar harvested on Rosslyn’s grounds. This is one of two opening to the south, and it is flanked by a pair of larger-than-life lilacs and two ooold hydrangeas.

… If the frame were tighter and the quality of the image were better, you might be able to tell that the lilacs are in bloom. The one to the right/west has rosy violet blooms, and the other has white blooms. A perfect or imperfect pairing? You decide. (Source: Bloom Flanked Gate)

A bit of color pallet asymmetry. Whether this be tragic flaw or perfect imperfection is a matter for the viewer to decide. If landscaping is a poetic language (or register) — and I’m certain that it is both, for me — then this subtle difference might well offer balance rather than imbalance. The notion of a mobile comes to mind…

Others’ Lilac Seasoning

It’s time to step aside and offer another sort of lilac season bouquet, the perfume-perfect poetry of Stacey Harwood-Lehman, Ann E. Wallace, Robert Burns, and Walt Whitman.

Every spring my mother would drive to the abandoned mansion on Carlton Road. The long path leading to the front door was shaded by a canopy of overgrown lilac bushes. She would cut as many as we could hold, reaching ever higher for the biggest and most fragrant flowers. When we arrived home, she arranged them in a cut-glass vase, a wedding gift, and placed the vase on our piano so that it was reflected in the mirror above the staircase. — Stacey Harwood-Lehman, "Lilac Season" (Source: The Best American Poetry)

—//—

Come lilac season, we swiped
a sprig or two from untended
side gardens and held the purple
blooms to our unmasked noses.

We inhaled the sweetness, so strong
and fleeting, and wept for you.
— Ann E. Wallace, "Lilac Season"
(Source: Autumn Sky Poetry DAILY)

—//—

O were my love yon Lilac fair,  
  Wi' purple blossoms to the Spring,
And I, a bird to shelter there,  
  When wearied on my little wing!
— Robert Burns, "O were my love yon Lilac fair"
(Source: Academy of American Poets)

—//—

When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d,
And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night,
I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.

Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,
Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west,
And thought of him I love.
— Walt Whitman, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d"
(Source: The Poetry Foundation)