Flowers

I once assumed that the word seasonal referred only to part-time employment, persistent allergies, and mood disorders. I didn't realize the word could apply to Bucks County front-door wreaths that were supposed to be rotated faster than you could say "Center hall Colonial. " Wreaths achieved stardom back in Greco-Roman times, when winners of sporting events were crowned with laurel or oak-leaf wreaths. A few centuries later, a practical decathlon champion realized that the prickly foliage looked, and actually felt, a lot better if you hung it on a door instead of around your forehead.

Spring arrived at an old Main Line estate to find enormous changes. The rolling lawns around the mansion are scarred with vast expanses of muddy earth where new homes soon will be built. A magnificent copper beech that adorned the property for generations had been cut down over the winter. The stone wall that once served as the entrance to the graceful old property was bulldozed away months ago, as were the evergreen plantings alongside it. Only a few forgotten rocks remain. Nobody, however, bothered to tell the crocuses.

Let springtime begin, at least at the Civic Center, where the Philadelphia Flower Show will blossom for eight days beginning today. The theme of this year's show is "Kaleidoscope - The Wonderful World of Color," featuring color displays from the seasons of the year and from different eras. The show will be open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. today and next Sunday, and from 10 to 9:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday.

When Jack and Emily Aprill first covered 30 acres with plants that hummingbirds love, it was a hobby. For 19 years, however, they have let the public in to see the tiny birds as they pause to spend August amid the swamp hyacinths, salvia, cinnamon ferns and cardinal flowers.

My flower-arranging capabilities have never gone far beyond the stuff-it- all-in-a-vase phase, and nine times out of 10 the flowers would have looked better if I had left them out in the garden or at the florist. Cheryl Monroe of West Chester, on the other hand, can take a dozen flowers, a simple vase, some filler greenery and within minutes create a delightful arrangement. She insists this ability is not inborn; often, she says, people just do not know what flowers to buy, what to put them in or how to take care of them.

Many of Pearl Bailey's VIP friends couldn't be on North Broad Street yesterday to bid a personal farewell to the show business legend. So they said their goodbyes with flowers. Among them were former President Gerald Ford and his wife Betty. "Pearl gave her incredible joy and talent to the world," read a card, addressed to Bailey's family, that accompanied a spray of flowers placed just to the left of the casket. "We will miss her," added the Fords, "but rejoice in having been permitted into her life.

'There's power in flowers," my pop the florist forever preached. Flowers were a gift like other natural gifts - a full moon, the mountains, rainbows and sunsets. Flowers, he would remind me, are a steady force, softening even the toughest among us. Even roofers send their hearts in a vase. But most of all, my pop told me, flowers speak to the verities of the heart and soul: Honor, truth, love. God, he was right. One day long ago, as I was working side by side with him in his tiny flower shop in the Paradise section of the city, I was telling him I had taken out a French major at Temple, but there wasn't enough spark to turn on a pocket flashlight.

Flower lust is a condition in which a person craves the sight of flowers. She can't get enough. She is drawn like a bee into other people's gardens, where she surveys the blooming variety covetously to see what would work in her own yard. She haunts nurseries, where the proprietors quickly realize they are dealing with an addict and get to know her by name. When the gardening season ends, she consults catalogues and plans for spring. If she tries to get at the root of her obsession, it seems to be color itself she desires, not unlike the grandmother Baby Suggs in Toni Morrison's Beloved, who called for pink and pondered the orange square in her quilt.

Annual statice is wonderful for a variety of bouquets and projects because of its wide array of colors. Elise Payne grows bunches of statice in her community garden plot and has developed a small business drying and using it to decorate gift items. You should be able to purchase transplants next month, but Payne, of Strafford, Chester County, prefers to grow her statice from seed, sowing it inside on a windowsill or under light units during the last week of April. Like globe amaranth, annual statice is sensitive to cold, damp soil, so Payne suggests waiting until the first week of June to transplant the seedlings, unless you live in a sheltered location where the soil warms up quickly.

What we like: The Villanova shop sells bunches of fresh flowers, ideal to surprise a sweetheart, for just $10 every day. The colorful floral selections include carnations, mini-carnations, alstroemeria, limonium and monticasino aster. Flowers on the Avenue is a full-service store that for more than 20 years has offered garden-style arrangements customized for weddings and funerals as well as personalized get-well arrangements, bouquets for proms, and single stems for dance recitals and school award nights.

Born in the suburbs of Philadelphia, I would never have predicted that my future husband, Ajit, was in India. Yet, at the age of 29, I was sitting in an apartment in Ghaziabad, one mehndiartist on each arm, being decorated with henna tattoos for my Indian wedding. Triangles, flowers, peacocks — even a king and queen. These were the main components of the designs crafted from my fingertips to my elbows, my toes to my knees. Determined to be authentic, I dutifully sat through the four hours required to finish the ornamentation.

The handsome 1805 brick house in Burlington City sits proudly on a street that could easily be found in Philadelphia's Society Hill. Its side and back gardens, barely visible from the sidewalk, unfold in a series of visual surprises. It's a serious house, one with innate grandeur. Yet its owners, Nancy Measey-Kurts and John Kurts, have allowed themselves some playfulness and whimsy, especially in the gardens, creating a place that makes visitors smile. There will no doubt be many smiles on May 19, when Burlington hosts its annual Home & Garden Tour.

Jackie Keifer hit a two-run single in the top of the seventh inning to give Archbishop Prendergast a three-run lead, and the visitors held on for a 6-5 win over Little Flower in a Catholic League softball game Tuesday. Brooke Lachette yielded two runs in the bottom of the seventh before finishing the complete-game win. Lachette struck out five and walked three, and Maggie Griendling had a double for Prendie. Ave Bolli and Fran Faillace homered for Little Flower. In other Catholic League action, Erica Ragazzone drove a towering three-run homer to left field in the third inning and posted a complete-game win as St. Hubert downed visiting Archbishop Carroll, 7-2. Ragazzone, a junior righthander, struck out six and walked one. Leadoff hitter Claire Alminde reached base four times and recorded three hits and three runs, and Jazmine Ortiz finished 2 for 3 with a two-run double.

For gardeners and other plant-lovers, here's a sampling of regional events: " 20th Annual Benefit Plant Sale Camellia, mangolia & rhododendron sale. University of Delaware Botanic Gardens, 531 S. College Ave., Newark. 4/27. " 47th Annual Plant Sale Hanging baskets, herbs, flowers, grasses & more. Benefits area beautification projects. Genesis HealthCare Corp., 101 E. State St., Kennett Square. 4/28. 8 am-4 pm. " 7th Annual Earth Day Pinelands Native Plant Sale Cultivated trees, shrubs, and native Pinelands flowers for purchase.

  "Today we commemorate our mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters who perished at the hands of the Nazis. " As Batame Hertzbach spoke those words Sunday in Philadelphia, the first of six candles was lighted on a candelabra - one for every one million Jews who died in the Holocaust. Hertzbach's speech was part of Philadelphia's annual Memorial Ceremony for the Six Million Jewish Martyrs, which attracted hundreds Sunday despite the pouring rain. Hertzbach is chairwoman of the Jewish Community Relations Council.

"Today we commemorate our mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters who perished at the hands of the Nazis. " As Batame Hertzbach spoke those words Sunday in Philadelphia, the first of six candles was lit on a candelabra - one for every one million Jews who died in the Holocaust. Hertzbach's speech was part of Philadelphia's Annual Memorial Ceremony for the Six Million Jewish Martyrs, which attracted hundreds Sunday despite the pouring rain. Hertzbach is chairwoman of the Jewish Community Relations Council.

Dump old plastic containers. Many garden centers now have recycling bins where you can drop off or pick up used plastic flower pots and trays. Either way, you're keeping plastic out of landfills. Box stores like Lowe's and garden centers like Primex in Glenside offer this service. For more recycling ideas for the garden, go to http://mypennfuture.org/siteMessageViewer?em_id=40561.0 Try growing hops. The plants, which grow from rhizomes, shoot up about 20 feet a year and the flowers smell wonderfully sweet.

MY NEPHEW is a very smart 3 1/2-year-old with an unassailable sense of logic. Like most toddlers, he sees the world in a linear way, without the usual adult contortions. Here is a recent conversation I overheard between Alex and his mother: "Alex, honey, time for night-night. " "I not tired. " "C'mon, it's late and you need to go to bed. " "I want to watch SpongeBob. " "You can watch Sponge Bob in the morning. " "I want to watch him now. " "Mommy is sleepy, Alex.

A LOT OF PEOPLE were smiling Tuesday afternoon. People who excel at irony and sarcasm, especially when writing about a certain breed of conservative. People who think that talking about "good" and "evil" as if they were quantitative, tangible things is a sign of mental illness. People who pretend to tolerate differences, but only when those differences don't offend their own personal sense of fairness. When Rick Santorum announced that he was abandoning his campaign at the most sacred site in Pennsylvania, you had the sense that there was joy in newsrooms and campaign headquarters and colleges across the Keystone State.