Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Surprised, Again


Those little white bells along their green stems are perfuming my living room, along with a vase of white and purple lilacs beside them.  When I sit down in my chair to read - every time! - I am surprised by the scent.  



The flowers of this shrub (I've already forgotten its name) have no scent that I can tell, but the flowers surprise me all the same, blooming with their blood red petals under a tree where all else is some shade of green, or maybe a demure white.

There are other surprises in my garden this week - the espalier pears are leafing out, finally, and seem to have survived my surgery on their limbs; last fall's pansies along the front fence are exuberant and lovely, when I never before thought to admire a pansy; and Milo chewed up some unknown plant, now just a root ball and a woody, chewed crown.  Who knows who the victim was?  I'll find out some day when I go to check on a plant in an out of the way spot and find a hole.  But by in large the good surprises outweigh the bad this week, and for that I am grateful.

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Garden Junkie


Gardening, chocolate, and coffee.  I crave them all right now, in about equal measure.  There is a proposal due, a trip to a far away place coming up, and a boy who needs a week of summer camp during a week when summer camps don't operate.  There is a little hamster scrambling around in my brain, and I want it to stop.  What puts that damn hamster to sleep are drugs and gardening.  The drugs are easy enough - I work across the street from my supplier, Panera - but the gardening is harder to score, because it takes time, and it is the lack of time that turns me into a brain-hamster-harboring junkie.

Those little feet above, all covered in dirt?  I want those to be my feet.  The grass is growing, the lilacs are blooming, asparagus is coming up, violets are scattered all over the garden.  The new espalier pears are budding out and I want to just sit and contemplate them a little bit.  If feel like if I did, if I could, the hamster might stop.  Maybe not, though - I'm a junkie, after all, and the more I garden the more gardening it takes to slake the craving.  Dirt.  The next gateway drug.