Lacecap Hydrangea.
“You spend an awful lot of time agonizing over leaves,” Joe, my partner, said to me the other day as we drove around the neighborhood. His statement was in response to my noticing that some homeowners had bagged their leaves in plastic bags while others had bagged them in recyclable brown paper bags, which the township now requires.
nce upon a time, in a garden somewhere between here and there, peony blossoms remained tightly wrapped in anticipation of their debut at the grand ball. Even the servant ants worked tirelessly and feverishly to ensure that each fold, each petal, was proper and elegant.
I am so distracted these days, and spring is to blame. There’s the smell of freshness on the breeze, the chirps and calls of birds in the morning, and the daily display of fifty shades of green. All I want to do is work in the yard: clean the beds, rake the lawn, bring out the terracotta pottery, inhale deeply — but I do have a day job that demands much of my time and a post to write.
Writing, though, is near impossible. Spring stimulates all of my senses, and each time I step outside, I am overwhelmed with words, feelings, and adjectives. Rather than write them down, they swirl inside my head as I become lost in the intoxicating world that is spring.
And so, I surrender to those who have already placed their words on paper, words that illustrate the beauty of the gardener’s most magical season.
May days are a wonder in the garden. It seems that each day there is something else budding, blooming, or fading away.
A few posts ago, I featured the gradual blooming of the first peony.
Call me a geek, but when I look at a peony, I can’t help but think that I’m watching the garden equivalent of the Big Bang. It’s stellar. It’s creation. It’s a miracle.
When I woke up this morning, I saw that one of my peony plants had bloomed overnight.
Then, I saw the rain.
It’s safe to say that I have a love – hate relationship with rain, very unlike my love relationship with peonies.
I actually look at most rainy days with a sigh of relief, especially today’s since it’s been dry for a whole week. It means that I have a day off from watering. (In the same way that I’m one of the last hold outs in the lawn mowing department, I also drag a hose and sprinkler all over the yard. That’s a whole other post.) So I bring all the flower pots out from any sheltered areas and let them soak up the moisture, because a good rain is much more quenching than my Gunga Din efforts. Continue reading
Nitty Gritty Dirt Man 