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.
