Greenhouse Day Seven Red.

Dipladenia

I enter through the barn and walk past a big red generator- like fog machine almost the same color as the faded barn.  Greenhouses are toughest in March.  February is easy.    It is cold, it snows, it is winter. February is reliable, planned for; challenging, but expected. March is a beast. Labile. " In like a lion and out like a lamb", it can be the whole menagerie between the first and the thirty first of the month.

  As we watch for the red bellies of robins, each greenhouse gets filled in turn with fragile seedlings and eac  old, ugly red furnace is turned on to keep them warm.  Some days the big boxes chug away  to keep the wolves at bay, and some they hum along as the warm winds of spring blow in and the cardinals feast at the feeders.  We shed our coats and snow boots in favor of  bright red sweaters and  tee shirts or tank tops the color of Fireballs.  While we assemble, fill and plant in temperatures ranging from below zero to a balmy 70 we layer and unlayer over and over as the sun rises and sets in the sky above the milky plastic. 

The long red snakes of watering hoses are susceptible, too, to the dip and rise in the temperature. " Red sky at night, sailors delight, red sky in the morning, sailors take warning", the saying goes but in the greenhouses  delight and warning wax and wane as unpredictably  as a mad hatter in the month of March. Today, there is a delight waiting for me as I open the next door. 

  The dipladenia says hello with as much gusto as a Marilyn Monroe air kiss blowing across her fire engine red lips. Also called Rocktrumpet -  it is in full bloom, with big, open arm flowers and lush, deep green foliage.  There are more than a dozen of them and they are as beautiful as this magnificent, cold, crisp beginning of spring day. 

As I wander down the aisle, hoping for more color, I spot just a whisper of red peeking out from a begonia plant.  One single pedal as soft as velvet. 

Ah, red.  The first color in the ROYGBIV of the rainbow. There will be more as the month goes on; deep reds, bright reds, variegated reds, red so pale it is almost pink. 

The rhyme "roses are red, violets are blue, " pops into my head and I can feel the sweet, sweet promise of the other colors.  So many colors, so many flowers, so many beautiful things to celebrate.  Today, though, diplademia, not furnaces or fog machines or old red barns,  takes the trophy for red.