Spring Garden

I only went out to cut some forsythia.

But the sweet little white crocuses that opened up this morning were such a welcome sight that I had to photograph them. And then there I was on my knees worshipping the spinach as it peeped out from under its bed of straw and admiring the strappy foliage of Tulipa clusiana that was curling around under the hydrangea … which called to me as I passed and insisted that I cut off the scruffy remains of last year’s flowers. 

Garlic greens were poking through the soil (yes!) and Jackmanii clematis was tangled all through my sweet Carol Mackie, a situation I could not just pass by without correcting. Gray-white Nepeta foliage demanded to be set free of last year’s brittle remains, and that old spiraea stump yielded (finally) to my not-so-gentle pushing and broke off at its rotten base. It takes, you might or might not be interested to know, three years for a decades-old Spiraea x vanhouttei to mostly disappear after it’s cut off at ground level. Viburnum setigerum berries are still hanging juicily aside pregnant leaf buds, fermenting. Maybe the birds that have eschewed them all winter will now begin to find them fascinating.

Piles of snow still rest in shady corners, and the soil is too cold to sprout much besides bittercress, onion grass, and last year’s larkspur seedlings. It is not spring yet.

But the sun is shining and the view, though short in stature, is tall in promise.

The itch tickles.