growing things

Despite the chilliness in the air, Ed and I are ready to do some catch up work in the yard. For me, that means, finally, filling in some of the flower pots and putting in new ideas into the shadier portions of the garden.

It’s all about the entrance, I tell myself. How you enter your home sets the stage for how you feel once inside. So the path up to the front door (which is really the back door, but remains our main and only functional entrance) has to be aglow with welcoming blooms.

 

But I have to work around what’s already there. Tiger lilies to one side. A rhubarb plant that is out of control, producing far more rhubarb than any sane person is likely to want in her lifetime, let alone a summer season. And yes, I know about rhubarb pie and rhubarb compote and freezing rhubarb and I have bags of it still from last year, which surely indicates that we like rhubarb in theory, but have trouble understanding its usefulness, being less dessert inclined than the average rhubarb loving person out there.

And I have to work with cracking clay pots. Until they can no longer sustain their pot like shape, we keep them. Even if they look live been through a couple of cyclones and at least one major hurricane.

 

Come summertime, life, my life, our life is all about looking out at the world from behind the screens of the porch. That’s been an elusive thing thus far, since the burst of hot March air has been trampled over by its polar opposite. But the day will come when we will sit out there and admire all that’s growing just beyond the fine mesh. I think about that now, as I continue to plant.

Ed adds an extension to the raised flower bed, I put in 48 annuals into the clay pots (because that’s how many you can buy for $17.95 at Johannsen’s) and half a dozen remaining perennials elsewhere. Another batch of perennials will come from the east coast in a couple of weeks. Why I need to order perennials from Connecticut when we have, within a half dozen miles, enough perennials to fill every yard in Madison is beyond Ed, but tradition has it that I say my thanks to the place out east that pushed me to love perennials and so I buy some plants from the people at the White Flower Farm as well. Just a small batch. But I look forward to its arrival. 

So it continues, this wonderful protracted planting season. With pauses. To twiddle thumbs, listen to the sandhills, play with Isis. 

 

Things have settled down somewhat. Planting continues. And that’s a good thing.