Around The Corner

One gardener's observations, discoveries and random thoughts whilst simultaneously worshipping and dallying in a Cape Cod garden. "A garden," said Ralph Waldo Emerson, "is like those pernicious machineries which catch a man's coatskirt or his hand, and draw in his arm, his leg and his whole body to irresistable destruction."

Around The Corner

27 March 2011

First things first: THIS might be my new favorite song. I can’t think of a reason why it shouldn’t also be yours. Let it play in another window as we go.

It’s been a cold week. Oh, there was plenty of bright golden sunshine, but punctuated with gusty winds and low temps and the usual spring blend of rain, snow and sleet to mush it all together into general Grossness.

Anyway, it’s nice to have the crocuses to draw my focus down to the ground, so that it’s easier to see that – while the general landscape of the neighborhood is still dressed in those dull earthen tones of late Winter – there’s a change happening down at our feet.

While I was looking up close at the crocuses, I discovered that there was a forest of newly-sprouted sweet allssyum seedlings beneath the protective canopy of last year’s dead allyssum plants.

I couldn’t be happier that I’ve got this plant growing there so nicely with so little encouragement from me.

It does encourage me, however, and my mind’s already begun to whirl a little with ideas and plans for what to do this year as Spring becomes Summer.

I also have to explore more of the other beds around the house and see what charms the season might be working there. I’m interested to see if last year’s sunflowers make a comeback on their own for 2011, as the calendula did last year from a 2009 planting.

In another part of the forest, the heliotrope appears likely ready for division after this spring’s blooming. It seems a surprise that it’s twice the size it used to be, but it’s also another of Life’s mile markers – it or rather, we, have been growing here for just about three years, so the heliotrope’s right on schedule. I love how it presents all purply-red from the early spring frosts, before turning it’s lovely green as our days warm.

As the song says, just around the corner from the Nest I’d seen a whole bunch of Spring, with this pink heather blooming in the same yard where a great colony of early daffodils have been singing their golden song since St. Patty’s Day. So this morning, I went off for a walk to see it close-up.

Aside from these early trumpets of gold, crocuses are the dominant bloom on the landscape, although there are surprises to be found here and there.

Several small patches of purple in someone’s lawn turned out to be wild violets, which was a happy surprise, indeed.

I also found a few Glory of the Snow. I’m tempted to say they’re my favorite, but I realize – as you must, too, by now – that every plant is my favorite. On this topic, you can be sure I’m not real objective. But I’m fond of their true blue color and their delicate, short-lived blossoms and the way they create puddles of color in a place where they’ve been allowed to grow for a while.

The bay as seen from Rock Harbor today was greener than it appears in this image, another one of those signs that the season is well underway, even if it often seems not quite so obvious. The wind off the bay was a little sharp, but also less so than its been recently.