April 10 is the date on this photo. To me, this is my garden at its best. My heart is singing to behold such beauty. Where, you ask?First of all, the Hellebore is blooming, still. Since March. How is it possible? For me, Hellebore is a brave promise that someday, winter will end. The days will get longer, lighter, and warmer. A time is coming when the earth will be so full of fresh food and fragrant flowers, the hardness of winter will be a memory. When snow falls on those rose colored blossoms, the hellebore waits patiently for that snow to melt. And it does. The snow melts. If the hellebore can endure, so can I.
And it isn’t just the hellebore making grand promises. I see beebalm is spreading green all over the place. A much larger footprint than it had last summer. I see tight purple buds of a hyacinth pushing up again, to show off for Easter. Yes, there is a gnawed off tulip, but I am not noticing that.
I am looking at all the foxglove leaves, tiny now, and shooting up everywhere. This will be a big year for foxglove. The lady’s mantel is looking good. It is a gift from a friend, and I think of him and his kindness when I look at it. I will try and remember on May Day, I am meant to dab its dew on my face to capture some eternal beauty.
Buddleia, you amaze me. Once planted in the middle of this island garden, it now grows in the cleft of a rock. This reminds me that as a gardener, I offer plants a chance, but what they do with the opportunity is largely on them. I do not understand why the buddleia grew so well for years, and them died. I recall occasions when I collected those purple spikes in great bundles and brought them to friends, one memorial in particular stands out as my best buddleia bouquet ever. I will tell the story of that bouquet, in some future post. I promise. For now, I feel sad about loosing that productive shrub. And yet, there it rises, magically transplanted to a split rock. How is that possible?
they returnI do not see bleeding heart, false indigo, or peony. I hope, knowing not everything comes back, and knowing a lot of things do. Irises are coming up so vigorously, I need to think about digging some out. Thinking about digging out plants, and imaging where they might shed their grace is much more elegant than actually digging them out — which is why this gardener — the one holding the coffee cup– thinks the second week of April is sheer heaven.
April 18 photo shows the spiky foliage of bearded iris, the purple blossom of the hyacinth, red shoots of peony against the rock, purple campanula by Persephone, and of course– Persephone herself, frame in yellow forsythia, is back in residents. Brooke has added a few plants by Persephone’s feet. The garden is greening in.