Down The Primrose Path......

How many people actually HAVE a primrose path? Have you ever seen a primrose path? Now you can say you have because here is mine in all it's May glory! I have always loved primroses...primulas actually. Each Spring I'd be astonished by their beauty and after much consideration as to which of the gorgeous blossom colors to choose I'd splurge, buying a potful at the grocery to enjoy for afew days before they'd invariably croak. Imagine the THRILL I had to discover that Reatha, the previous gardener at our place at the lake had nurtured this beautiful spring surprise! They are so happy in this shady spot where they are flourishing with no help from any human. They truly smile up at me in yellows, roses, orange, purples and fuchsia.

...and they are not alone. A week ago there were only hints that life was returning to the gardens. There was the most wonderful surprise...that the deer, despite an unusually harsh winter and their annual habit of using my shrubs as their personal salad buffet, had left everything UN nibbled. This means that I won't have to wait until sometime after the fourth of July for areas in my gardens to look more normal. My old fashioned Bridal Wreath bushes will sport beautiful, long, cascading branches of the peppery sweet miniature bridal bouquets.

It's all coming back...From the incredible Redbud tree whose breath taking blooming I often miss because it happens before we actually are out here to see it ( I'm enjoying it this weekend, YEAH!)....to the Autumn Clematis whose little beginnings of growth will result in a trellis bending with the weight of it's tendrils and multitudes of sweet smelling white star flowers always AFTER we've moved back to town in the fall.

Maybe most heartening is the return of all the shrubs and perennials we planted and transplanted last summer as we sought to make this new place more "ours" by transforming the back lawn into yet more perennial gardens with a curving pea gravel and stepping stone path from the parking area to the front porch. Beside the dollar investment in new plantings which I would be sick to lose, I will admit I played "musical plants" moving some favorite perennial "friends" and a lilac bush way too big to expect survival. Yet, there it stands, big enough that you'd think it'd been growing in front of our little house for many years and it's leafed out and is chock full of tight dark purple blossoms ready to stun me.

My greatest anticipation was to scurry out here after the snows to see how my two biggest investments had fared. Twin hydrangea bushes which , if they make it, promise to grow to a nine foot privacy feature between the yard and the road. They did, and I am now able to look forward to bowers of beautiful parchment, spring green and pink panicles ( that's your new word for the day from me)...maybe not so much this or next year, but you know what "they" say about the third year of a garden plant!

The Lily of The Valley is going bonkers! There are pips of it as well as stray daffodils spilling out of the garden bed into adjoining areas. In afew days the leaves of the two dogwood trees in the middle of the ocean of Lily of the Valley will complete their opening process and by the time the beautiful white stalks of flowers of the lilys appear they will be shaded by the baby dogwood leaves and pink flowers.

I'm looking out my window, down upon a small sea of Iris...packed in tightly in both front and back gardens they are sporting bulging, tightly wrapped flower buds...like so so many deep purple turbans! Next to them, grows a patch of short, slender green shoots; looking like a horticultural overgrown "crewcut", these will soon be a happy little plot of the teeniest, tiniest miniature irises in bright orange with yellow throats speckled with red!

I go through this every year, but as I mentioned, it has been a LONG LONG and harsh winter with record breaking snow fall. It only results in my (really) wanting to try to do a cartwheel to express what I feel seeing my bleeding heart plants already imitating shrubs, begging to have their picture taken....my new hosta plants poking their clans of pointed asparagus green tips out of the bark promising to soon fulfill their covenant to edge my walk each year.

Oh, and there are my coral bells...three different colors, golden green, deeper green and the beautiful red grapey colored ones. All will shortly send up stalks of tiny pink flowers to swing above their shiny leaf collars. Can there possibly be a better season than this?...a better time of this season that this week when we KNOW there can be no more snow? Don't you just KNOW that HEAVEN will be a garden? I cannot wait for that!