Wild Tendrils Grow Waywardly
The spring gardens look clean and organized. Flowers grow obediently in rows. Every plant gets along by honoring each other’s boundaries. I love this tidy, cohesive version of the garden. It looks well tended; I feel accomplished. But, of course, an early spring garden, albeit tidy, produces few flowers. By June, rows will riot, flowers will erupt open, and I will struggle to find a clear path anywhere amongst the raised beds. Arms full of flowers, feeling satiated and inspired in an entirely different way, I’ll plod up the slight hill toward the house.
Do you know this feeling — the slip of time between waiting for everything to grow and the moment just beyond, when gardens grow too abundantly? Every spring I toggle between a scarcity mindset, when it seems nothing will germinate, to the converse, when wild tendrils grow waywardly. I am fully to blame: I reach a blitz stage of spring gardening, when left over seeds get tossed into the garden haphazardly, usually before a rainstorm. July flowers will grow together as tangled stems winding toward the sky. I’ll ask myself, “What kind of strange jungle have I cultivated here?”
In early May, when ephemerals nearly bloom and bulb flowers first emerge, our yard hosts wildlife just starting their warm-weather preparations. Birds build nests, squirrels procure food by rooting in the yard, and bunnies, hungry from winter, gnaw on Siberian iris and aster. Everywhere I find evidence of wildlife making this yard — trees, grass, low-growing shrubs — their home. Last week, I walked past a pile of wet leaves camouflaging a deep divot, where a mother rabbit once nested her bunnies in early April. Overnight an animal revisited the nest, digging deep in the burrow. I could imagine a predator scouring the abandoned bunny nest for leftover prey I could just as easily imagine a desperate mother rabbit hallowing out the earth with grief. Such a sorrowful juxtaposition: spring flowers on the cusp of becoming alongside an empty nest of what could have been.
We’re only a few weeks out from summer solstice. In the final stretch of spring, when fairy lights sparkle against a blue-grey twilight at 10 pm, I recognize how many different hands have gently sculpted this landscape with me. Each flower stem, lettuce leaf, winding snap pea, and plump lemon balm plant filling the kitchen garden carries the fingerprints of people present and past. What a comforting thought.
It’s evening in the last hours of May. I listen to rain patter outside my front window, waiting for morning, when dew collects along petal edges and puddles seep away in afternoon heat. It’s the best place to be, really — at the beginning of summer. Nothing but anticipation and possibility.
See you again at the end of the month when I share a new essay and more flower photography. Check out all of my flower photography at Roots & Vines Photography. Don’t forget to leave a comment! Writing is community.
-Betsy
