Let The May-ing Begin

Ahhhh, May Day. How can it possibly be here so quickly? A weekend wet with rain (3 inches in Wellfleet) draws to a close with a lovely sunset. Work kept me away most of the weekend, but there's been time to look, sometimes by flashlight. It's the most exciting time of year, things have grown, it seems, every time you look.

In bloom today we have pansies and violas, a recently planted english daisy (red), daffodils fading, hyacinths, dutch and grape, primroses, dames rocket, forsythia, myrtle and trillium. And all around them the gardens are thriving, spaces filling in (some on their own, some with some subtle direction from this humble gardener)...the show this year will be grand, to be sure.

It's funny, I look forward to the work, and so I'm longing for Thursday, the one day off I can spare this week. There's something about clearing room for plants to grow, to show off a little, and hopefully do their thing and settle in as happily as possible. And it's while I'm weeding that the chickadees fly down to see what I'm up to.

I get to listen to all of their bird brethen exchanging news about weather and wind, predator alerts and birth announcements as I work. Lining the beds, moving the rocks, identifying seedlings, training vines, planting seeds. Getting down in there, my fingers in the dirt, carefully feeling out the persistant grass roots that grow (thankfully not too thickly) in the proposed new garden. I'm keeping an eye peeled for coyotes, as I listen for chickadee babies in the birdhouse nearby.

And I wonder what color the peonies will be from the stalks that seem to be rising in so many places about the yard. The many roses are a mystery, too. As are the irises, the foxglove, the sweet william and so many other things. What colors will they bring to the landscape? I can but imagine.

I want to train the grape vines that are growing haphazardly in the area. I have at least taking them out of the tree...is it apple, or a late cherry, perhaps? Soon we'll see. I was thinking of an arbor, for the grapes, but perhaps some sturdy bamboo tripods would get the vines up high enough to braid them from opposite sides of the path. We'll see. As always, the garden's a never-ending experiment.

There's a new bird in town...quite the fancy song...hard to see clear, as it's sticking to the upper canopy of the back yard. The steep angle makes it tricky, even with binoculars...but my money's on either a female yellow throated warbler...or maybe a female northern parula warbler. Anyway, it's a darned pretty song. An'twill be a damned pretty month!