FRAGILE ADDICTION
I am addicted to growing things. It is not such a bad thing to be addicted to, really, is it? My mother always had lots of houseplants crowding the windowsills when I was a little girl growing up in NYC, and she really came into her own when we moved to the suburbs and suddenly had a lot more space. I was fairly indifferent to her hobby, except that I hated the prickles on her cacti. But the seeds of plant-loving must have been lying dormant within me. One day in school we planted beans in dixie cups...and I was hooked!

I recently found these bulb vases in a thrift shop and ran out to buy hyacinth bulbs to force in them. But I was too late! The season for selling loose hyacinth bulbs was over. I happened to mention this, very much in passing, to my next-door neighbor Fay who is a big-time gardener herself. She immediately whipped open the door to her fridge and pulled out two hyacinth bulbs! The wise gardener stocks up for just such gardening emergencies.

These two delicate beauties are now perfuming the air in my studio.