It's BAAAAAACK!

04/12/2004 6:16 PM

It’s Baaaaaaack!

Spring is like Christmas to your aging Grandma, Kaitlyn. Yet each year when it arrives I am always surprised and wanting to tell all the growing activity to STOP, wait, STOP, I’m not ready.

Though I’m not sure just how I would ever be ready or what preparations I should have taken that I urgently feel I forgot.
Every once in a while in early March I walk by the waking gardens and peer down to see what might be growing. I see the leaves of the daffodils peeking up through the ground and smile. Mentally I note “daffodils growing, two weeks until bloom” but the notation never makes my “todo” list.

The same with the pansies budding all about and ready to provide happy faces in the early spring garden in the chill air these flowers love. I note the pansies are ready on my mental list, then move on.

The peonies are waving fringy leaves all around the March wind and I make yet another mental note. The Autumn Joy is growing round and promising, the hostas raise variegated arms and the hedge roses turn green then dull red with promise of bloom.

A week or so later I might chance to be tooling about in the car and see the forsythia waving yellow limbs as my car passes them by and I begin panic.

NO, wait, my mind says, I’m not ready.

Finally the daffodils bloom all over the place, including a handsome stand in the center lawn garden. The pansies smile their blooms right alongside and the early spring garden is a sweet display. I want them to stop, stop right there. Stop and give me an hour or so to look at it all. But my daily life yields no hours to gaze at the daffodils and pansies and I know that likely I’d never spend hours just watching flowers.

So I see the lovely sight from the corner of my busy eye as I scamper to and fro and I feel guilty. Sometimes I steal a peek outside the bedroom window and the pretty daffodils wave back.

Every drive to somewhere reveals something else in magnificent bloom and I want to shout again. The magnolia tree sports a crown of blushing pink tulip-like blooms. The pears and cherries and crab apples wave their blooms around the air and I want them to STOP, stop right now. Stop until I have the time to properly enjoy them.

Each day the world turns greener and I feel as if nature is on fast-forward.

I am always amazed when spring comes again, Kaitlyn. Such a simple, perhaps even silly, surprise for a woman my age. But of course, spring will come again. It always has.

This is my first full year with the gardens in my new home, Kaitlyn. Already I’ve formed several garden areas from the once vast green front yard. I’ve transplanted the flowers that I thought would do nicely from my old home. Hence the hedge roses are robust with mature roots grown in Critter Cove. Someday I will tell you about Critter Cove, Kaitlyn. For now know that it was the fond name for my old house in the taxing state of Merryland.

The Iris are all happy here in Delaware, as are a few Autumn Joy and my beloved Stargazer lilies. All transplants from Merryland. I did this past Fall plant a few plantings along the front yard fence line but I note this early spring that do not appear to have done very well.

It’s a whole new gardening eco-system for me, Kaitlyn. Once I struggled to produce bloom on a very shady and sloped lot. Now I have many feet of sun, glorious sun, sun that loves the roses I could never grow in Critter Cove. The lot is straight and flat. The canvas is blank.

And just I did in Critter Cove, I will have to go through a learning curve. What will grow here, what would look nice there, what sort of fence would effectively protect against errant dog while not hiding the flowering perennial bloom to come.

I’m looking forward to the experience, Kaitlyn, and will keep you updated.