Reality of spring - posting from SE Michigan

All the bright colors in the photo, just two weeks old, are now gone: the redbud tree, the grape hyacinths, the red tulips, and the last of the golden daffodils. But they are being replaced by the next in the procession of spring beauties: the clematis on that lamppost is now in bloom; irises succeed the tulips. Out back, the periwinkle bloom and the violets multiply. The cute little mazus reptans are thriving and flowering, although too tiny to appreciate from across the yard.

The lilacs, after a glorious season, are done for the year. It is time to hack the neighbor's back from my driveway and mine back from my other neighbor's driveway. My dwarf red and extra-dwarf apricot azaleas have opened their first flowers, with the real show still to come. The Tiny Monster geraniums, more monstrous than tiny after many years, have begun their summer-long flower show, and the lemon thyme is a carpet of deep pink. Rosebuds are fat but still unopened, although that will change with all the rain we've been getting.

Other rhythms of life are also evident. Mama robin, on my porch light, has raised her brood of three, and she and papa no longer shriek and head-smack all who dare to approach my front door. The family waits for its annual gorging on my Bing cherries. Although "extra dwarf," the tree has long since grown too big to net.

The power was out all Saturday after a lightning storm killed the transformer in my backyard, so I spent the day planting, between showers, lots of things I'd been looking at in catalogs for years and unexpectedly found in the nursery just outside my neighborhood: Queeny Purple hollyhock, pyrethrum red painted daisy, tradescantia Zwanenburg Blue, crocosmia Lucifer, chocolate daisy, blue dwarf sea holly. I moved a few plants to better homes for them and also put in the red-leaf begonias around the mailbox and the deep red callibrachoa across the back yard. Much of these had to be covered against frost Saturday and Sunday nights, as did the Early Girl in its wall-o'-water and the rosemary, parsley, and basil; I was glad I had held off on the other tomatoes and peppers on the kitchen windowsill. The two big planter boxes were also filled with new assortments of plants, but those can be wheeled into the garage overnight.

It may have been premature, but I'm glad I did all that planting, since the gardening parts of the backyard are now under inches of water and will be unwalkable for weeks, even after the rain stops. It is this time of spring when I am relieved not to be fruitlessly washing the paws of my late dog many times a day as she returns from patrolling the swamp. And maybe it will even be too wet for the bunnies who wiped out my early greens and snap peas (and astilbe!) to come after the second crop before I get the anti-bunny fencing up. I don't like to do that until I have the veggies all planted, since it's a pain to lean over. I really need to get some genuine rubber boots for this season — my tootsies nearly froze in the crosslites when I was placing and removing anti-frost covers in standing, 40-degree water. We'll see soon enough whether that tradescantia really does like wet feet.

Spring Gardening as Collaboration

“He that is in a town in May loseth his spring.”
- George Herbert (1593 – 1633)

Our gardens often provide the interface between our geometrically organized living spaces and the comparatively “wild” undeveloped spaces in the sprawling suburbia many of us inhabit. Man rules the urban environment and the architecture we construct to suit our needs and pleasures. Nature rules what’s left of the wilderness beyond our cities and outside our neatly organized suburban dwellings. My dish garden with the empty chair beneath an arbor of thyme and variegated lemon geranium (or pelargonium if you’re being stuffy) often spends winter near a window where I can be reminded of the empty space I long to occupy outdoors. I hope I never miss Spring by spending it cooped up inside somewhere.

Whether they be small patio or balcony gardens consisting of clusters of flower pots, or rambling back yards planted and nurtured on a grand scale, what we do within the (mostly) fenced enclosures that mark the boundaries of “our” property is make a space to transition between the organized world of man and the seemingly chaotic world of nature.

So it is in our cultivated gardens that most of us encounter nature. And it is there – in the process of cultivating our gardens – that we acquaint ourselves with the need to cooperate, not dominate. Every garden is a collaboration between the gardener and nature. Sometimes nature rejects our attempts, and other times nature improves on them.

When a painter paints a landscape, it captures a moment in time, and a vision the painter saw and interpreted. A painted landscape is static. When a gardener creates a garden, while it is possible to capture it in a moment with a camera, gardens are never static. Even a paved sculpture garden is subject to the play of light and shadow, rain or snow, that re-shapes what we see. As any gardener knows who has watched a treasured plant succumb to the forces of nature, gardens evolve in ways not always within control of the gardener.


Thus, for better or worse, our gardens exemplify our collaboration with nature, and teach us the best way to garden is to establish a friendly co-dependence with the forces of nature – our seasons, our soil, our changing climate. My zen frog, barely visible beneath another small arbor backed by another miniature tree of lemon geranium, seems to be silently meditating on something profound about collaborating with nature.

As I pause during this busy season of cleaning, planting, ordering, and acknowledging my past gardening failures, I once again learn the lessons of patience, acceptance and co-dependence that I seem to forget during winter when my garden is left to itself. My garden brings out the best in me, even though I often fail to return the favor.

Spring Day

Along the Ssu River it's a fine day for blossoms
the landscape is endless and suddenly new
I recognize the East Wind's familiar face
a thousand pinks and purples and everywhere spring
- Chu Hsi(1130 - 1200)

Advice

March came in like a lion for most of U.S, and we’re even getting our share of rain here in Southern California. It's sunny today, but cold. Last year at this time, I was out in the sunny yard with my Spring seeds and peat pots, imagining flowers.

Spending this morning indoors while considering the extremes of March weather, I came upon a thought that makes a similar comparison about different ways to give and receive advice.

“A man takes contradiction and advice much more easily than people think, only he will not bear it when violently given, even though it be well founded. Hearts are flowers; they remain open to the softly falling dew, but shut up in the violent downpour of rain.”
Johann Paul Richter