Right now (Monday evening), it's raining, but the weekend was pretty much perfect, which meant that we spent a lot of time in the garden. Let's review the highlights! As it turned out, my fears about insufficiently clumping the crocus were, for the most part, unfounded. (This is a picture of an aconite in the foreground, with the crocus in back. We only have a handful of aconite this year -- and they're not even close to being clumped -- but nobody wanted to be left out of the photo shoot!) The flowers opened up for the sun, which made them seem bigger and thus perfectly clumped! Or maybe not as perfectly clumped as the ones I've seen in Fort Tryon Park, but that's a gold-medal standard beyond the means of mere mortals like us. Our flowers ended up looking more like a small stream than a continent or an ocean, which is perhaps not quite as dramatic, but is still an improvement over the past few years, when early April was generally speaking a pretty sad time in the garden, with lots of barren ground on display. Or maybe "sad" is overstating it, but it was all expectation instead of reality. We have white and orange crocus, along with some purple ones that haven't yet blossomed. (Note the drops of water, placed with an eyedropper...just kidding, I would never do that.)Behold our floral river! The red in the background is provided courtesy of the leaves of the heuchera, which made it through the winter and will provide some low-light interest once everything else fills in. Next year will be even better, after we plant 50,000 more bulbs this fall. I know I should be "enjoying the moment" and, really, I am, but it's hard not to plan ahead in the garden. The crocus meandered around the miniature yew. The light was even better on Sunday morning. I spent a few hours picking up dead leaves, which is a very satisfying exercise. I love our bamboo, but its leaves turn white after they fall off, which is not something you want to see cluttering up your floral river. (Most deciduous leaves turn brown and are harder to see against the soil.)
White crocus! Dramatic shadows! Life was pretty much perfect during these minutes, even though it was Sunday, day of looming dread. Still, I told myself, I had accomplished a lot this weekend: I had picked up approximately 75,000 dead bamboo leaves, for starters.
Later, when I went on a run through the park, I resisted the urge to pick up the rest of the dead leaves in New York City. Gardening is a good way to remember that you can only control yourself, and not the rest of the world. I also wrote and staged a play with real actors:
Dante: Do you think that you could...
Elektra: You can stop right there, because the answer is no. I'm looking for flying snakes. As the sun crept over to the shady side of the garden, the still-closed crocuses lit up like luminaria, providing a path for anyone who wanted to take it. THE END.