For the last couple weeks I've had a hard time finding scenes to photograph. Most of the time the weather has restricted our movement, but today the sun was shining and the temperature was quite a bit above zero. Twenty-six degrees Fahrenheit to be exact.
Yet STILL nothing I saw on the trail was worthy of even temporary storage space on the Cannon's SD Card. While the sight of the sun streaming through the trees and the blue-tree-shadows that lay across the road were enjoyable, I never once got the urge to reach inside my Carhartt Active Jacket to pull out the camera.
Bandit, my two year old German Shepherd puppy, and I trudged through the light, fluffy powder until I grew weary of stopping every ten feet so he could obsessively sniff bunny poop along the trail and turned back from whence we came. On the way back home, the afternoon sun began to set casting the snow in a surreal golden glow. Although it was lovely to see, there were too many prints in the snow to make a photograph worthwhile. In fact, at one point my thoughts turned to teenage acne and the kind of moonscape you see in bad science fiction movies. "B" movies were what my elders called it.
Then we came in from the cold and a delightful, delicate scent reminiscent of Spring teased my nostrils.
Shucking boots, jacket, hoody, gloves and scarf we entered the kitchen. Lo and behold - what was there to greet me?
A delicate pink hyacinth has just begun to bloom.
We're more than half way through the winter. Thirty-six more days until the official start on March 20, 2014. I can't wait for it to start.
I guess that's why I "forced" these flowers to bloom. How do you do that?
Well, I'm no master gardener, but my grandfather (RIP) told me a thing or three and I remember maybe one or two of them. [Plus the high-school horticulture class didn't hurt.]
When 'forcing' a bulb to bloom out of season, the idea is to mimic the seasonal freeze. Typically the seasonal freeze can be anywhere from three to six months (at least it feels that way here in Pennsylvania). Therefore, the duration of dormancy has to be fairly long. Six-eight weeks should work for most bulbs.
I looked at a calendar and knew that half-way through the winter I might need a little pick-me-up. At Christmas-time I put bulbs saved out from fall planting in a brown paper bag. Nothing special about the bag. The kind you would use to pack a school lunch or to pop corn in the microwave. Then I put the bag in the 'crisper' of my refrigerator and forgot about them.
January was cold and snowy and dreary. Record-breaking low temperatures. Record-breaking snowfall amounts. Frozen water pipes. Slushy roads.
At the end of January I decided the time was right.
A shallow lightly-tinted glass dish was pulled from the cupboard. The hyacinths were grabbed from the crisper. And some small decorative stones were picked out from a candle display. I arranged the bulbs in the dish - pointy side up like you're supposed to do. Put stones around and on top of them leaving only about 1/3 of the bulb itself exposed. Then about half an inch of water was placed in the bottom. Enough to make contact with the bottom of the bulb, but still allow it to "breathe". (In other words, you don't want to drown the plant.) Next stop for the plants - the sunniest window in the house!
Then the wait began. A little over a week and there are seven little bulbs in various stages of bloom.
The kitchen smells like Spring.
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