The Lupin Lady

Recently, my mother and I drove to one of my favourite spots at this time of year – a “secret” place (okay, it’s not really so secret, but it seems a little more mysterious if I think of it as a secret place!).  I think it is an old quarry, and at this time of year, it is filled to overflowing with wild lupins of every shade of pink and purple you could imagine, with a few white lupins thrown in for good measure.  A few days later, my husband and I drove to “the shore” to spend time with some co-workers and friends.  On the drive, we marvelled at the many lupins we saw, and at one point, I was left almost breathless as we passed a field which must have held millions of blue flags (wild irises). 

This, I think, is my favourite time of year here in the Maritimes, maybe even more this year than usual.  We have long hard winters here, very different than the prairie winters where I grew up.  It can get very cold, and the northeast winds are bonechilling and penetrating.  It thaws, then freezes, leaving the world coated with a layer of ice, beautiful and sparkly in its own right, but not really very pleasant for the outdoor activities that I enjoy.  We wait so patiently for spring to arrive, and this year, we waited even longer, enduring a cold, wet, windy, and pretty unpleasant spring after a long, cold, unpleasant winter. 

Now, all of a sudden, the trees are in full leaf, the lupins are blooming, and the wild roses are opening.  This early summer world in the Maritimes is breathtakingly colourful.  It almost hurts the eyes to take it all in.  The marsh grasses range from deep green to the lightly shaded greens of hay grasses, highlighted in places with reddish yellow marsh grass and dotted with daisies and buttercups.  The blue of the irises is so subtle that you can easily miss them unless you are looking for them; once noticed, they add a rich layer to the colours of the marsh.  Pink and white sweet rocket, creamy white heliotrope, and the minute flowers of bedstraw punctuate the lush greenness of the landscape and leave their sweet scents lingering on the air. 

Barbara Kingsolver, in her novel Prodigal Summer, calls this time of year “the season of extravagant procreation,” and the most extravagant procreators of the early Maritime flowers are the lupins.  I am constantly amazed at how different each lupin is from the other.  Some are dark purple; others are deep pink.  Once I was fortunate enough to find a lupin that was almost a lavender blue.  I haven’t seen one like it since.  And then there are the bi-coloured lupins – dark purple on top and white inside.  Or pale pink with fuchsia highlights.  So much variety, every one different, and just when you think you’ve seen every shade of purple or pink imaginable, you find yet one more. 

There is a children’s book called Miss Rumphius that my kids used to read.  In order to make the world more beautiful, Miss Rumphius spreads lupin seeds all over her town, and becomes known as “The Lupin Lady.”  I have aspirations to become another “Lupin Lady” and spread lupin seeds in ditches where they don’t already grow. 

Soon, the lupins will give way to fireweed and devil’s paintbrush, and all too soon, they will give way to the burnished colours of autumn.  I guess in some ways it’s the shortness of the season that makes them all the more precious.  Already, since we visited the lupin quarry last week, they are starting to go to seed.  But what beauty they give every year.  Happy lupin days!