Gray Day

I had gotten myself into rainy day mode, with two days behind us, and more on the way. I wasn't giving the Garden a thought this morning, simply checking my email and enjoying a second cup of coffee...when I heard it. That familiar bird call, same as I'd heard the other day. "Our" oriole was sitting atop the window feeder in the living room window. That song, high, sweet and sharp, like the orange wedges they love so much. Of course I fumbled the camera on the best shot, but did manage to capture this glimpse of our brilliantly-colored neighbor, before he flew off, continuing his call of two-short, (pause), one long...perhaps announcing his presence (or maybe simply enticing me out into the garden, as my shoes were on as he flew away), and offering the Bird World equivalent of a personal ad, to attract a mate. We wish him luck.

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There's always something to do out there, of course. This morning I spent some time poking around the garden, looking first to see what was newly appearing, and then giving a closer look to other things...such as this "hosta-like" plant I've been speaking of. Now that a second cluster of it is coming up nearby, I'm beginning to think that it's the other allium I planted last fall. I thought I had seen them all emerge, but perhaps those were only the blue ones. I have a suspicion these might be the white...and am only a little annoyed with myself for not having diagramed more closely the things I tucked into the soil so quickly last fall.

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Despite the wet conditions (it wasn't actually raining, but it has been...), I decided to do a little more raking out in the far corner of the garden, an area I'd like to pay a little more attention to this year. I still like the idea of a field of milkweed, but there's an old fence I want to address...and who knows what else might be growing out there?
You'll remember from last year, perhaps, that I don't know the name of this little yellow flower. It's quite sweet, and most welcome in the garden. I find the seedlings here and there and always try to preserve them...they fill in a nice nitch in the season, as we wait for other things to come into bloom!

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There's one aspect of being a gardener I don't always have a handle on. The dis-satisfaction. It seems so often I'm either planning a bed and thinking ahead to what a particular planting may eventually look like, or otherwise trying to imagine said planting by remembering past successes.
But it's this sense of anticipation with which I get a little excited as I drive by yards such as this one on Rock Harbor Road in Orleans, where their golden allyssum is already so well established...and I imagine what I have to look forward to.
And I know I'm a gardener who still needs to learn to live in the moment.

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