Pansies for Edna Day

This is one of the big ways we celebrate the beginning of spring here on West Elm Street: The annual planting of the pansies. This little tradition goes back eighty years to when my dad was a kid. He’d buy a shoebox of pansies from old man Hugo Busch on Dunklin and Madison for his mom’s birthday—which almost exactly coincides with the first day of spring. She would put them in her front planters, for everyone to see. Dad has written about this on his own blog, so I won’t repeat it.

This is one of the first subjects I wrote about when I started the Op Op, too. Look here for that blast from the past.

So yesterday, two days before Grandma’s birthday, I put pansies once again into the front planters. After the drab winter, the pansies, and the flowerbeds full of daffodils, are incredibly cheerful. And we need it.

My little addition to the traditional is to use a little bit of mulch, and to place crystals and interesting rocks artistically around the pansies, which helps hold the soil in place during these sometimes severe spring storms.

Each year I arrange the rocks and stuff a little differently.

As spring always does, there are chilly days mixed with warm ones. Sometimes a chilly day, though, is sunny enough to warm up our front steps, and I can sit on the steps and bask a little after work and before I make dinner. And the pansies are there to make me smile a little bit.

Here's how I arranged them this year.

Edna Day 2012

Grandma Schroeder was born right here on Elm Street 107 years ago. Yep, right at the beginning of springtime. It was a fitting birth date for her; it matched her personality.




So we remember her each year when we put pansies into the front planters. (I’ve talked about this before.)

This year, since the weather was so unseasonably warm beginning in February, I took a chance and planted some veggie seeds for a change. Some kind of “mesclun mix,” spinach, and a few rows of radishes.




When we got a little snow about a week after I planted the seeds, I was kind of worried, but not really. It was no problem. “A little spring snow never hurt anything.”




We added pansies about a week ago. We got them this year from the Dutch Bakery in Tipton. I did tell you they sell plants, too, right? They’ve got far more than those incredible “Dutch letters”!

The radishes are coming along. I planted a bunch of different types. Looking forward to a couple of radish sandwiches!




We’ve already had several salads from thinning out the various lettuces and other greens in that mesclun mix. Oh it’s so good!




Happy spring, everyone!

Out Like a Lion

Sue--a native Ohioan, so she's allowed to be critical--says that in Missouri, March comes in like a lamb, and out like a lion--and this year (again), that seems to be the case.

Wow, all that snow we got yesterday! We got about five inches! Fortunately, most of it melted today, and we (and my foot-cast) made it to the Wurstfest in Hermann. What a great time! But more on that in a bit.

Tonight, I want to share with you some of the photos Sue took yesterday of our pretty spring flowers as it was snowing!

We had big, wet, clumped-up flakes.




Here's a picture of some of the pansies in our front planters. This cracks me up--it looks like someone nailed that purple one right in the face with a snowball!




And then, these peony shoots look like they're getting ready to throw some snowballs!




And our daffodils? When Sue showed me this picture, she put on a funny voice and said, "--Hey, I can't see!"




I wasn't too worried about how these flowers would handle the snow; the forecast wasn't showing much chance of truly nasty-cold weather, and these early spring flowers are surprisingly hardy when it comes to a little spring snow.

The first year I lived in Montana, I was dismayed one morning when the flowers I had planted were inundated with snow. (Realize . . . in Montana, it can snow just about every month of the year! Bad place to try to grow tomatoes!) But a friendly native Montanan reassured me, using a phrase that I've recalled just about every spring since then: "Aww, a little spring snow never hurt anything."

And yeah, she was right.

Edna Day—March 22

There are federal holidays and state holidays. There are religious holidays.

And then there are also personal holidays, and this is one. Grandma S—Edna—was born March 22, 1905, the time of the vernal equinox, and you never met a human who personified springtime more.

Because we live in the house in which she lived her entire adult life, I think about her a lot. I can’t help it. She wasn’t a traditional grandmother, because of her character. My brother once described her as “a frustrated actress.” She was the kind of person who brought the party with her everywhere she went. Pretty much.

Anyway . . . as kids, my dad and his brothers started a tradition of presenting their mother with a flat of pansies every year on her birthday, and these always ended up in the front planters, on either side of the front entryway. They stuck to the tradition, pretty much. And I helped some years, especially as Grandma got older.

Pansies are so colorful. They look like little happy faces, smiling at you when you come home after one of those client meetings. They welcome our visitors. Good deal.

And around here, the vernal equinox is just about the best time of year to plant pansies; they’re hardy enough to tolerate the occasional spring snow.

So even though Grandma isn’t with us anymore, we don’t see any good reason to break the pattern. It’s turned into a little ceremony, where we remember Grandma’s love of flowers and gardening. We poke those colorful little pansies into the soft ground and think of how glad we are to have known her. She was cheerful and colorful . . . and so are pansies.

But there is something that goes beyond the comfort of tradition, and the nostalgia of remembering Grandma, when we observe this little celebration.

It feels distinctly satisfying, like a form of consummation. By performing this small ritual of planting pansies in the front planters, we officially put winter to bed. Simultaneously, we formally greet spring, and then the spring greets us back each time we walk through the doors.

It has to do with a lot more than Grandma, but we still call it Edna Day around here.