A View From My Garden

It is Nanking cherry time. One minute they are simply covered with swelling buds as are most shrubs in my garden now, then I turn around and they are in full bloom. Thanks to Himself, the lord of the manor, the lawn has been treated with Weed and Feed and then mowed and edged. It is now in its best springtime dress.. Himself is the one. He has been working long days; finishing a board fence along the alley (which has mysteriously become a "Lane"), cleaning out years and years of old wire fence patched like a crazy quilt. The broken tiller is still broken, but Pat and a neighbor have made a useful trade and the early tilling has been done. The vegie beds look neat and fertile, waiting for planting.

Another neighbor, I notice, prunes Nanking cherries into tamed hedge shapes. The lord of this manor has inclinations that way, also, but I defend the cherry's wild growth, only allowing trimming to keep them in reasonable bounds. These are reflections of our two lives; one requiring order and mastery, the other seeking the wildness of birds. The lilacs and the honeysuckle will come on next, after the violets are through blooming and the forsythia has faded into summer green. Oh, so much to keep up with and so little time!

We have a flock of about 100 evening grosbeaks at the feeders, in the trees, finding the last of the crabapples and haws, and the dried up rowan berries, flinging themselves from feeder to feeder until all are empty, calling and fussing, and holding long threatening conversations with the cat. They do not know she has given up any true bird hunting for bird watching (not unlike myself, actually) with only an occasional rush to nowhere to keep herself in form.

The grosbeaks are most welcome. They love the pond and bathe and drink and walk about with their feet in the shallowest water. We love their natty spring outfits, not garish, but just right, and they are like the robins; they speak a good line about feeling threatened by us, but it is all an act; they are very self-contained birds.

It is time to hustle now, to drain every valuable moment from such short seasons. The potatoes are cut and hardened and so they will be first in. Then the onion sets and the peas, and broad beans, these English favas that may be planted as early as peas, and which bear all summer long. Past time for early lettuce; my palate tells me so while waiting for that lovely crunch and burst of flavor that only spring garden lettuce provides. Of course the garlic is up and growing well; six to eight inches high now. I plant garlic in September or early October. More garlic every year, and still we run out before the new crop comes in July.

In the lean-to greenhouse, the epiphyllum are starting to bloom, easing my greyed-out spirit with their tropical colors and shapes. Epis are the joy of my life; more beautiful then orchids and so easy to grow and to propagate. There were only a few species brought in from the central Mexican highlands to begin with, and now there are thousands of hybrid varieties and they are collected and admired all over the world. You must come and visit my epis while they are in bloom, and if you like, I will give you a piece of a stem to start your own, for such is the nature of gardeners everywhere. Such is the nature of true growth.