Rewind

A Visual Essay in Photography

The month of May nearly fooled me into believing it was summer, not spring. A long spread of hot weather — 90 degrees Fahrenheit — pushed seedlings up in the garden and kept me busy with hand-watering newly planted garden beds. Now, grey skies match a chilly 44 degrees Fahrenheit. Tender plants, like my dahlias, tomatoes, and jalapeños, are covered by frost blankets and sheets to protect them from the cold. Spring months play quick with the weather. Mother’s Day might be a wash out with rain. Memorial Day might bring hot weather worthy of a parade.

Here are a few photographs from the garden this month.

Spring’s gift: lilacs. These blossoms came from my mother’s garden, but they perfumed our house just as well as if they had come straight from the back yard.

A snapshot of the kitchen garden in progress. Three raised garden beds filled with food and flowers: garlic, snapdragons, lettuce, radishes, lots of herbs, sage, clematis, delphinium, jalapeños, tomatoes, snap peas, and salvia.

I started about eight basil varieties indoors this winter, including emerald basil. I love putting basil in my bouquets or pinching off a branch to garnish my ice water in the summer.

In the stretch between early spring and the tide of June’s heat, a wave of flowers emerge in shades of blue and purple: Virginia bluebells, forget-me-not, lungwort, Eastern waterleaf, ajuga. They wear winter’s chill in their petals, as if ice and snow drained into the soil and came out the other side as flowers.

In one of the large flower garden beds, I grow marsh marigold. Native to my growing zone, it tolerates overly-saturated soil (and adds a wonderful pop of color to any May Day bouquet — see below).

A springtime bouquet: lots of green with a pop of gold. Marsh marigold, Eastern water leaf, yarrow, honeysuckle vine, cherry blossoms.

An iris bloom from last year. This year’s plant is about to blossom — it’s one of my favorite irises in my collection. Not quite blue, not quite purple.

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I grow most of my plants from seed, but still invest every year in a few new flowers from local nurseries and plant sales. I purchased a Sweet 100 tomato plant from my neighbor down the road who puts hundreds of plants on card tables in his garage, plops a homemade sign at the end of his driveway, and trusts customers to tuck cash under plant trays when selecting a seedling to bring home. Later today, I’ll visit a local master gardener plant sale set up in a small suburban park. Call it fortification for when the slugs or squirrels ruin my stash of plants. Call it joy spread across low-tech and local pop-up plant sales. Either way, buying flowers are part of my springtime routine.

See you next week with a new poem.

-Betsy