"White is not a color"

is what one of my former wives used to say to me....okay. I confess. I only have one former wife, but I can pretend, can't I? And she did used to say it (to my annoyance: I happen to like white flowers). Alas, John Q. Public and his equally opinionated spouses (former and present) tend to agree with Gwen and selling a snow white shrub that blooms not long after the snows have receded in Colorado is an uphill climb. Or just plain futile. And of course it blooms just as the crabapples and redbuds are doing their amazing rose and magenta fireworks. And yet every year I come and worship at the spectacle of Exochorda wilsonii, one of the most reliable, spectacular and really just plain wonderful flowers of spring. I googled and found two or three nurseries that supposedly sell it. My friend, Jim Knopf, has E. giraldii, and you can occasionally find the much more slender and delicate hybrid 'The Bride'. But maybe THIS is the year I can persuade that Celtic magician Mike Bone to root this (or perhaps I will remember to look for seed: surely it will set lots and lots of seed for me?)...then I too can have my own private snowstorm with puffy white clouds scudding across my own azure sky.