Ghostwater Garden

It's Spring in Southeast Michigan

Just another day in paradise.  Four inches of snow overnight on the fourth weekend of April is not common.  I thought to go out and get cute pictures of things peeping out of the snow. 

This is fritillaria persica, with camassia and bearded iris foliage in the background. 

There isn't much cute out there. 
It all looks fairly desperate.  Like these poor daffodils, face down in the snow:

This little muscari seems to be holding its own:

I feel real pain when folks fall inactive or disappear. 
It's not my place to worry. 
It does no one good to worry. 
Yet.
I worry.

Robert Brady writes:

TRUE BELIEVERS

Every once in a while, particularly when the weather is nice - like now - we up here on the mountain are visited by clusters of well-dressed folks of vacuous sincerity who come out from the city to walk in their high heels over my raised beds so they can get their spoken routine within earshot and interrupt my labors to hand me some of their brightly colored tracts outlining God’s plan for humanity and that includes me, their eyes say, as though it were a gift or at least a revelation, but I refuse the tracts and after pointing out God’s own asparagus on which they are treading I attempt to talk to them frankly as one being to another but it is always impossible, for true believers have very limited hearing and no longer command certain fields of thought.

Nevertheless I tell them I do not need a middle-man to maintain my relations with higherness, nor do I need the conflicting words of God's many secretaries - whose descendants have been killing each other ever since - that anytime I see a sprout rise up out of the ground, hold in my hand a tiny plant with its roots shining, smell the crown of a baby's head, take a deep breath of the scent of lilac, watch a hawk ride the wind, see the stars circle the night sky or behold any other of a thousand daily miracles, I have no doubt that I am as much heaven as earth, as much now as eternity, that I therefore know lowness as well as I know highness, yesterday as well as forever, for I am those aspects embodied, I carry them within me in very cell and heartbeat, indeed as these visitors themselves do; but by then they have drifted off to trample other gardens, leaving me in the ancient company of seeds...

Robert Brady

originally published at Pure Land Mountain
reprinted with permission. 

There is a special kind of heartbreak

And it's not unique to gardeners.  It's also seen in pet breeders, as they watch their kittens and puppies go off to other homes.  It's the unknown fate. 

It's the Star Magnolia just coming into bloom, and mister announcing he wants to move. 

Spring Clean-up

Most of my clean-up here is in spring.  I leave seedheads standing for the birds, and most of the foliage from the last year does no harm to leave until spring.  The bearded iris are an exception to that, and every third year or so I actually manage to remember to clean them out in the fall.

So comes the sun and warm weather, and I am out there pulling away the dead leaves from the new spring growth.  Daylilies, iris, delphiniums all reveal fresh new green or bronze leaves.  The columbine are little mounds of tidy foliage.  The chives are already a foot high.

Some things in zone five are best left for spring.  I looked over the lavender, the sage, the thyme - all the woody perennials - and decided to wait a few more days before pruning them down.  The buddleia and the russian sage are also waiting.  Once they show new growth, I will know how much of the old to take off.

Crocus have been showing for some weeks now.  I have a few handfuls of several varieties, so the early season is still going, although they are just about done by now.  The late ones are huge, dwarfing the little early ones.  I have a bunny or something that is going through and mowing down my crocus foliage.  I put some chive cuttings over them today, in hopes that it will deter the damn beastie. 

The daffs are all sending their buds skyward, as if in competition with the leaves to see who will get there first.  The scilla are also halfway to bloom.  I will watch them both daily now, awaiting the day they open.  I love me my blues in the garden.  These scilla, planted last year, will be my first wave of the blues for this year. 

For once, this year I cleared the fall leaves from the border with the apricot tulips before they got all tangled up in them.  Maybe I will get a flower or two, although like most of the high bred varieties, these have been slowly declining since I planted them. 

In the same border, I trimmed out all of the ratty foliage from the hellebores.  They are supposed to be early bloomers but in zone five, I don't know what that means.  I have some fresh leaves coming up, and will watch them for anything that looks like buds, but they have only been in the ground since fall, and may need more root time.  I dunno. 

Speaking of extended root time, I have a pot of amaryllis that I have been dragging in and out for several summers of green floppy growth that is FINALLY sending up a new bloom stalk.  Hurray!

Last night when I let the dogs out, the yard was full of the sound of the spring peepers in full chorus.  It's finally here.  It's spring. 

Can't wait until I can start digging around... I've got LOTS to do this year.