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Snowflakes Are Nice, But . . . Blossom By Blossom Spring Is On Its Way North

Snowflakes Are Nice, But . . .  Blossom By Blossom Spring Is On Its Way North image
Parent Issue
Day
12
Month
March
Year
1972
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Donated by the Ann Arbor News. © The Ann Arbor News.
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Blossom By Blossom
Spring Is On Its Way North

By Kathleen Hamptom
(News Women's Writer)

Thonk!

That's the sound of the gauntlet being thrown down to all you gardeners who have been sitting around despondently all winter.

It’s seed catalogue time once again; time to prepare for the annual softening of the ground.

Spring takes its old sweet time getting up to these parts. Up through Warrior, Ala.; Hoover Gap and Prosperity, Tenn. On up through Stamping Ground, Ky., and Pitchin, Ohio. Before long it’ll be strutting down Main Street Milan, high-tailing it into Saline.

And where will you be without your plot of ground to welcome it?

Some Ann Arborites get a jump on spring by cultivating hothouse flowers or forcing branches to bloom a few weeks early. Can you blame them?

All winter long we’ve had to put up with frozen car door locks, snow up the sleeve and down the boot, frosty eyeglasses.

Snowflakes are nice. Individually. But they only seem to travel in groups of millions.

Now that it’s almost over for another year, who can fault the few who jumped the gun? Like the Ann Arbor Garden Club members who presented an informal showing of flowers and arrangements recently. They did it in self defense, one member said, because the weather is so rotten at this time of year. Or the Matthaei Botanical Gardens, which is always brimming with one exotic blossom or another.

Photographs of some of these natural beauties appear on this page.

Now you have an idea what’s in store for you the first time you rustle up the battered old gardening gloves which have been sitting under a can of oil all winter in the garage, search out the yard tools, slip on those beat up old jeans and head for the yard.

Breaking up the tamped-down, winter-logged soil sure beats chipping a layer of ice off your windshield. Clipping the revived lawn has it all over shoveling sidewalks — at least until mid-August when some are willing to trade in mowers once again.

And once the seeds are in, there’s that mystery. You can’t help digging up a few to see what’s happening, sticking your nose into the dirt to try to fathom nature’s ways, poking, pushing, willing them along.

A tip. Then a stalk. A bump at the top.
And then lots of color and good smells and dirty fingernails. And insects to complete the picture.

So there’s the gauntlet — the challenge to fill Ann Arbor with the fruits of seeds. To sneer at concrete, exhaust fumes and creeping Detroitism.

Are you up to it?

News Photos By Eck Stanger

The Ann Arbor News

accent on
women

March 12,1972 Pages 14 to 17

[Image Captions:

Form And Function Meld Together To Create Beauty

Happiness Is A Full-Blown Orchid In Mid-Winter

The Amaryllis Is A Show-Off—But Who Cares?

Oh, Mophead, Mophead, Pull Yourself Together

This Christmas Cactus Is Confused About The Seasons; It’s Shockingly Red Bloom Is Just In Time For Easter

Year Of The Rat In Bloom
This arrangement, created by an Ann Arbor Garden Club member, honors the Chinese New Year — the Year of the Rat. Each element symbolizes a wish for the new year: the pine is for longevity, the bamboo for fidelity and wisdom, the plum for happiness, the azalea for joy. What better way could there be to herald spring?

The Hothouse Azalea, Creeping Over The Simulated Garden Wall With Ivy And Other Greens, Is A Mood Arrangement Done By An Ann Arbor Garden Club Member For Informal Show]