What’s In The Garden Now?
When I moved into my new house, Fall had pretty much set in real good. The leaves were long gone from my crabapple trees in the front yard and my lilac trees along one side of the house. There were two bushes at each end of the front of the house, which I’m told are rhododendrons, and a bunch of really dead looking plants in the front garden.
I’ve been looking forward to Spring and the possibilities of a garden since January and then the snow finally hit Maine and just. would. not. go. away. It lingered like a relative who doesn’t know he’s outstayed his welcome, borrowed too much money, and eaten all of your stockpile of junk food. And then he had two really wild parties two weekends in a row before taking off until next year — you know, he’ll stay away just long enough that we’ll forget how frustrated we were by this year’s visit.
By the time the snow had gone, I’d given up on gardening. My dreams of a vegetable garden and sunny afternoons planting flowers in the yard had somehow drifted away through the long days of staring at a plain white yard. I’d come to believe that there was nothing but snow underneath all that snow…and even when the snow had begun to melt away and grass began to peak through, it was only a taunt because another Nor’Easter would just cover it up with another 10 or 12 inches of more snow.
But finally after that horrible Nor’Easter April 15th - 17th when first the snow pounded the North East and then the rain and wind came with such intensity and timing that water was pouring down the outside of my chimney and seeping up through the foundation of my basement floor, suddenly Spring arrived, not with a whimper, but with a bang — the beginning of mud season.
And all of a sudden, little surprises started to appear in my garden of mystery. So now I run out every day to look at what new might have appeared in my front garden, because I have no idea what the former owners planted there and it’s not all coming up at once and of course, never having had a garden before and knowing nothing about flowers, I have no idea what to call anything.
Like for incidence what the heck are these red things?
And are these yellow things daylilies or daffodils?
And something has already eaten my white crocus…
But so far, I’ve saved the purple ones, which even Pugly has tried to eat…
tags: garden, flower, bloom, Winter, Spring, Nor\'Easter, crocus, daylily, daffodil, photo blogging
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on April 27, 2007 at 3:51 am
wil said:
As a Mainer married to a displaced Southerner (Louisiana), I do understand your frustration with this particular “Spring.” Those (yellow blooms) be Daffodils; the purple is a snow crocus (I think) and the red stems are beyond my ken. Keep an eye open for lavender and wild strawberries as soon as the tulips start heading out in the open away from protected areas.
Never lose sight of the fact that the next four months are time to prepare for the next winter a’coming.
It is THAT fact more than anything which disheartens folks from south of the Mason Dixon line … the inexorable return of winter with everything else merely a prelude or sloppy seconds to the main event. That survival mentality required is often an entirely new experience to those who consider a rough winter to be a dusting of snow in January and tornadoes in February.
Good luck!