Roads in my Roses There are roads in my roses That only I can see, When Spring time digging Reveals them to me. Rusty now against my heart, The car had traveled through the years. Remembering, I see again, This car, new. And through my smiling tears, I see it launched By then-small hands Busy under a bowed little head, On roads that reached forever, But never left my flowerbed.
They are out there, alright, calling to me more urgently every day. “It’s too early,” I tell them. “Go back to sleep for a little while longer; you know that the danger of frost and late snow will come again.” But neither the garden nor the flower beds are listening to me. The clamor of spring has begun. Our soft-spoken pussy willow was the first to get our attention. It bloomed well before Easter, having its say early. It is a hardy soul and seemed to relish the snap of cold winds from the north. In fact, I thought it wore its cap of spring snow rather well. The parsley and spearmint were next to herald spring’s arrival. We tucked freshly picked sprigs around the deviled eggs on Easter. Though it still seemed too early, we welcomed the whispered hints of more to come. However, the stubborn apricot tree that…
Like a benevolent Garden Goddess, I find myself bestowing—OK, forcing a blessing of fruit or vegetables upon all who visit my home. It actually started early in July. Rejoicing over the first of the harvest, I was eager to share my abundance. “Here, please take a container of raspberries home with you,” I would say as I magnanimously held out an offering to my visitors. Then the plums started dropping in generous quantities from the tree. Ripe and ready to eat or preserve, they would not wait. I made plum sauce, plum muffins, plum bread, plum turnovers, and we had fresh plums for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. “Just a minute”, I would call to my unsuspecting visitors as they were leaving, “You will want to take some of these plums home with you.” Undoubtedly touched by my generosity, they would happily leave my door, clutching their sacks of plums. Then…
Garden? Did someone say “garden”? I don’t know what happened, but somewhere between “getting an early start” and “I think it’s too late now,” I got stuck in the GARDENING TWILIGHT ZONE. Thanks to El Niño this year, I got the earliest start ever on my flowerbeds and garden. Remember the warm February and March? Energized and motivated by the premature spring, I ordered the specialty seeds from my seed catalogues, much earlier than usual. Anticipating their arrival, my husband even got out the rototiller and started turning over the dried vines, compost, and weed sprouts in the garden. Then, because my perennials had to stand on tiptoe to see over the fast-growing weeds, I started weeding and pruning—much earlier than usual. I even pinched off sprigs of parsley and mint a month before Easter! Not much later, weed sprouts required my husband to rototill again. It was not long…
“Do you know that you have a watermelon growing in your flower garden?” My friend was pointing to my “gate-crasher”, the uninvited guest, a single watermelon growing under the asters next to the snapdragons and pansies by my front steps. Even though some of its vines are now blackened by the frost of early fall, it is doing quite well in its sheltered bed. It’s about eight inches long and four inches in diameter; I’ll give it another week before I bring it inside. I first noticed the vine, complete with tiny yellow stars, in late July. I admired its spunk, its audacity to enter my flower bed and make itself at home like that. And, since it seemed to promise a future gift of appeasement, I let it stay. Actually, I shouldn’t have been surprised to find it growing there. It is residing in the flower bed that runs…
I just filled out my seed order for spring planting, eighteen packets of seed for my one hundred square feet of garden space. Let’s see, I ordered sweet peas, the Early Mammoth, which will have “exceptionally beautiful, large ruffled blossoms with graceful curling tendrils.” It will climb quickly and produce “sweet-scented perfect big flowers in lovely colors.” I definitely need them to climb my white lattice trellis that canopies my white-slatted garden bench, like the picture in the catalogue. There I will sit among chintz cushions and reread Jane Austen during my leisure time on warm summer days. I also ordered lavender. “With its heady scent and gray-green foliage, lavenders make perfect landscape plants.” Barefoot, I will float through fragrant fields with the early-morning mist. Perhaps I’ll make my own lavender soaps and perfumes; at the very least, I will tie dried sprigs into tiny bundles to place among my…