Emily Brisse

on thick days the rhododendron, the azalea shrubs in blush are too much concluded praise,  so I slip into the quiet of green woods and green air and say nothing

It's all there if we just slow down enough to look. 

I love the way Gustavus Adolphus College lives on top of a hill. I love its river valley, its view of the fog that lifts off the moving water in the morning, its wide skies. I love the highest pane of the highest window on the highest floor of Old Main, especially at dusk. I love its crab apple trees. I love its open lawns. I love its sidewalks. And even more than these, I love the friendships I formed as I strolled those sidewalks, reclined on those lawns, studied under those trees, stared out from that window, and hiked up and down that hill toward or away from that valley the four years I was a student there. Gustavus gave me an education, yes. But it also gave me friends who are as bright and assured and open as flowers. We see each other less now than we did then, but when we reunite, it is always always spring. Some of them joined me for a picnic last night among the thousands of tulips that are up at the Arb . Don't get me wrong: I can point out a tulip . Almost every Min...

( The blossoms, that is. Not my husband.  :)  It is HEAVEN here, folks. Hope you're getting outside.

Here is one of my sixty before sixty goals: to have someone name a flowering plant Foremily. When I was two I would have been drawn to forsythia. Always, always, always I have loved effusions of blossoms. They transport me somewhere magical, and it's an especially potent trip here in Minnesota because these colorful displays come off of months of white. But I've never known it's name. Never known anything about it except for it's beauty. Now I know these things: this variety is called the Northern Sun, it was introduced by the U of M specifically for colder climate cultivation in 1982, and it's thriving here now, in spite of those 30' nights. Also, I know that someday I will plant one or ten of these in my yard, and herald its spring blooms with my whole heart.

Here's the truth: I hardly know what to write here, or for that matter really want to write anything, because I am simply so satisfied with the walk I just had. Wildflowers! Nothing against the Snowdrops . They were all about hope, which I desperately needed the day I found them in the Arb, but today there was color everywhere. Yes, still a lot of brown. But also SO MUCH GREEN. So many little plants pushing up up up up up up up. And when I came across these purplely-blue bells and white-blue stars carpeting whole stretches of earth, I literally gasped. That is how much of a nut I am. The Siberian Squill and Striped Squill made my day. They are number two on my Thirty Before Thirty list, and I love them. They remind me of eyelashes. That is all.

Loathe as I am to put "snow" in any more titles, I am happy to announce that I have selected the first of my five newly-known plants on my Thirty Before Thirty list: the galanthus nivalis, or snowdrop. Apparently there are over seventy-five varieties of this plant, and all produce white blossoms. Their greatest benefit (besides being so charming) is that they're early risers. One of my dear childhood friends has returned from two years abroad, and when she and I took a stroll through the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum last week, we were disappointed early on to see mostly browns. Stumbling across these snowdrops then was a bit like finding a pot of (white) gold. From now on, when I see them, I will think both of her and the dependability of good things coming back to us.  

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