There is little that fills my heart like the sight of new blooms. I am always surprised and delighted by my spring garden, replete as it is with long-forgotten plantings, each shoot tentatively making its way through the dark grey earth.
I am captivated by my garden. We have a relationship of sorts, my garden and me, a sort of give and take, alive and ever-changing. It is science: soil to be analyzed, species to be catalogued, Latin names to be remembered. It is stubborn (or maybe that’s me) and it is forgiving. There have been bad choices (the plume poppy that towered), problems with powdery mildew, earwigs. There have been the inevitable surprises: the climbing rose that came back, and the hardy salvia that blooms brilliantly without fail.
Every year at this time I dream about what my garden might be, how it will grow, what will return for another year and what may not, where I will augment and where I will cut back.
But always, it begins in the same way.
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