Home gardens: the potential and promise.
What I really want to write about today is the feeling of potential. That feeling I get when I see a peony blossom bud with a petal peeking out from between the bracts, Or the moment kale cotyledons curl out of the soil four days after you plant the seeds like clockwork. Or the drop shapes of the allium flower buds waiting to pop open into full spheres. I cannot wait and also I do not want it to happen all at once and then as swiftly as it happens it immediately starts to fade.
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| Globe alliums about to burst into fireworks. |
Even now, the cowslip and drumstick primulas are beginning to droop and show signs of finishing their once and only appearance of the year. That I won't see them again until next May breaks my heart a little and also I know that's how it works. The living and dying of gardening. That is the deal.
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| Yellow cowslip primula, spotted lungwort and dainty epimedium . |
And yet, while I longingly stare at the fading primulas, who aren't quite finished yet, a whole new cast is coming onto the stage. The pasque flower is pushing out big purple petals wrapped in downy feathered leaves. The early blooming trollius is forming a mound of perfect knots of buds, where the mound of lion's bane blossom buds is more open and leafy. Both of these plants will bloom in a different shade of sunshine yellow, and from a distance you would think they were the same thing. I can't wait to see them again because I've forgotten, in a year, which yellow is who.
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| Spring species peony |
Meanwhile the spring peony is also growing 6 inches a day, or more, and the flower buds are swelling and the petals are starting to push them open. And the ferns. I think that the ferns grew 6 inches a day also, becoming an orderly collection of vases.
The ferns will be here all summer, but the newness of them with their tender green and fragile fresh fronds will darken and toughen up. The vases will spread wide and claim large swathes of the garden, shading out the chocolate lilies that are difficult to relocate from their hidden spot in the back of the garden. I didn't even mention the chocolate lilies - oof. They come and go so quickly.
The potential and promise of abundance. The working gardens, the raised beds holding the food, dye, and herbal plants need a lot of tending but I believe its worth it. I cannot wait to see the Japanese indigo woven together with chamomile and cosmos. To pluck the leaves and flowers to make art and teas. How will the marigolds do this year I wonder?
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| Sea lovage and chives for my eggs. |
I am so happy to see these friends again, year after year. I'm grateful for the sea lovage I grew from seed 4 years ago from the Anchorage coast. The Kenai Lake chives I grew from seed collected by a friend over 10 years ago. The artemesia will take over the garden unless I keep digging it up. The garden sorrel is growing well, and so are the calendulas I started in April. I was surprised to see the mountain valerian and the red clover come back - sometimes I forget what I have planted. I already harvested and replanted the horseradish. I think that the arnica is finally going to bloom this year. Fingers crossed.
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| Scrawny Dye Garden |
These working gardens look terrible right now. The plants are still small, scrawny even, and there is too much exposed soil. I'll mulch with leaves as soon as they get a little bigger. But I can also see the potential. Future me can smell it. I want that sticky feeling on my fingers, the pungent smell of plucking a calendula flower. I want to run my fingers through the lemon balm, the lavender, the thyme and the oregano. I want to put the mint in my mouth. I want to weed my way thru tender stems of chickweed, feeling the spring and snap as I pull them out from between the other plants. Carefully setting aside the cleanest and juiciest to use to make food or medicine. I want to press the pineapple weed flower between my teeth and feel the tiny flavourful petals land on my tongue. And the strawberries. Please let there be strawberries.
But today. All I can do it water. Thin out the weeds I know I don't want. Edit where necessary. There is going to be too much fireweed this year unless I get out there. Too much fireweed. What a problem to have.
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| Rhodiola about to bloom. |
Meanwhile, the horsetail and spruce tips are nearly ready to be harvested. Tonight I think I will get to harvest my first bouquet of nettles. I've been eating dandelion greens. There are too many gifts to count. I kneel at the foot of my garden. The future me, the future of us together, the garden, the ground the land and me, my family. And you too dear one. This is what a home garden can do for us. I want this reverence to drench us like rain.
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| Washed and trimmed dandelion crowns. |
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