Ah, 'tis the season -- for holly and poinsettia, for mistletoe and Frazier fir, for pansies and ornamental cabbage and kale . . . what? Why are pansies and ornamental cabbage and kale decorating shopping malls, apartment complexes, industrial parks and individuals' gardens, practically cheek by jowl with Santa Claus and reindeer these days?
Nursery spokesmen, who naturally are enjoying the sales, say with a straight face that pansies have always been hardy through the winter, going dormant in the severe cold, and coming back in the spring. Yes, a few pansy plants do make it through, and look as if they've survived a plane crash.
This fall, as glorious as last winter was wretched, encouraged extending the growing season, so perhaps, this year, there was some excuse for planting pansies in October. But ornamental cabbage and kale, which are purple and white, will turn various shades of brown after several days of exposure to below-freezing temperatures. With their heft and grouped planting they're quite a sight in the dead of winter, kind of like rotting cauliflower and almost as slow to decompose as Styrofoam, freezing and then decaying in the ice and thaws that winters here routinely serve up.
They're a marketing triumph brought from the South, as if Messrs. Clinton and Gingrich weren't enough to keep an eye on.
It used to be that for everything there was a season, but that's become blurred now. Women are having babies in their 40s. They used to demonstrate their innate superiority to men by not becoming parents when their energy levels weren't up to it, (putting aside the fact that they often couldn't) but that's all changed now. We're in denial and extending our seasons, wearing sweatsuits at 70, and no, you may not borrow my Retin-A.
Pansies and especially ornamental cabbage and kale at the same time as Christmas decor are like chocolates for breakfast. They're like major league sports at the wrong time -- baseball in February, ice hockey in June, and you know what happened to them. The clear spring and summer colors of pansies, ornamental cabbage and kale somehow seem out of whack against the dull bronze of oak leaves, rust-colored pyracantha berries and the chiaroscuro of winter light on bare ground.
One of the pleasures of living in Maryland is that we have definite autumns and winters, but they don't last too long. Our fall foliage is splendid and we usually get at least a taste, maybe more, of real winter. That means we usually get a measurable snow; children get to go sledding; we get to see the silhouettes of bare trees against the sky, evergreen trees weighted with new snow. We get to wear parkas, and the politically incorrect (and brave) get to wear fur.
Now is the time of year when it's drab, when one has to look for beauty outside, and it's exciting to find it. Our landscape is a changing smorgasbord that doesn't need pansies and ornamental cabbage and kale in December.
Ann Egerton is a Baltimore writer.