Spring Update

A kind reader, wishing to feed my blogger-vanity, asks for a Spring Update. I think he must simply like to start off the work day with a transfixed gaze at something colorful and benign. This fits the bill.


In fact, I do like writing about my plants. To me, plant-care is a very “other-centered” activity. I spend far more time working with my borders out front (even though the light is less consistent, the planting space is on a slope, and the roots of nearby trees make digging deep trenches virtually impossible), than on the ones out back, which sort of thrive on sheer neglect.

Today I am happy to see the beginnings of what I call my “woodland spring garden.” This is a bit of a misnomer because the woodiness consists of only one very large birch tree. But it provides ample spring light now when the branches are leafless, morphing into dappled light when the birch leaves emerge, and eventually emerging as almost complete summer shade for the dry ground below. In the spring, the light is perfectly in place to grow the yellow and blue flowers that are a Monet-like statement about the loveliness of this color combination.

And so, of course, there are the daffodils. Scattered between ground cover are forget-me-nots, golden yellow globe flowers and the tiny blue bells of the hyacinth. In odd spots I have the very gentle green beginnings of ferns (they’ll grow monstrously big by July and then collapse for want of moisture by August –the birch roots take too much of the water to sustain this garden for long), and toward the end of spring, the lily-of-the-valley and the candle wildflower will signal the end of pale yellow and blue, and the beginning of a summer infusion of stronger greens and contrasting whites.

A reminder, nothing is blooming yet, but I think here, in this garden, we’re talking about just a week, not more, before we begin to see a display of color.