The beauty of spring days makes my heart do a bit of fluttering as I breathe in the sights and smells that abound in the garden and all around town. Forsythia bushes are in full bloom everywhere but in my yard. Mr. Rabbit ate my bush down to the ground over winter so I guess I will just have to enjoy the beauty of everyone else’s. I saw a couple of magnolia trees blooming as I drove through town yesterday and were they ever lovely. I remember when we visited my dear friend in Louisville, Kentucky, in late September and they had magnolias blooming all over town. At that time I didn’t know that there were varieties that bloom in either spring and fall.

The bloodroot has multiplied in my oval garden and I have a nice little patch of it in bloom right now.  The wild violets are plentiful this year and yes, they are blooming. My blue grape hyacinth are so tiny you have to look very close to see their blooms, but they are very pretty. I had thought about buying a few more to plant last fall in several different colors of blue, but I never got around to placing an order for them. Now I am really sorry about not having more of them to enjoy.

A few dandelions are showing their pretty yellow faces and bringing back memories of my childhood; picking bouquets of them for my mother or making chain necklaces with them.  How I miss those carefree days of being a child and all of the fun we always had picking dandelions, violets and hollyhocks. Life was just so much better for kids back then as we made our own fun and it didn’t cost us anything.

I made my first trip to the garden centers where I picked up a cute moss covered basket that I filled with a planter of sedums and a little garden ornament that will sit on the patio table. They also had a burlap tablecloth that I wish now I would have purchased so the basket would have something pretty to sit on that went well with the basket.

We got the greenhouses set up so I can pop the flowers into them when the weather turns cold again next week. This will protect the flowers I couldn’t resist purchasing.

Slowly we are getting the spring chores checked off the list and soon we will need to mow the yard as I see some very long tufts of grass in the front yard. I have been working on getting all of the stuff out of the garden shed and wish I had a whole day that I could spend just getting all of this stuff out and placed in the gardens.

Over the winter, as I finally had a chance to read all of my gardening magazines, I found lots of ideas I want to try this year.

Once the weather stabilizes and we no longer have cold temperatures, I will start planting my seeds. I like to have them in the ground no later than Mother’s Day and usually it works out so that I can start potting containers the following week that will go to the cemeteries.

I just love working in the gardens. Sometimes my passion takes all of my time, so housework gets put on the back burner for a rainy day. The sweet peas did get planted so I am anxious to see them sprout and grow.

Celia Thaxter wrote in her book “An Island Garden,” 1894, “The very act of planting a seed in the earth has in it to me something beautiful. I always do it with a joy that is largely mixed with awe.”

The anticipation of spring seems to always take forever to get here. The leaves open so slowly, and then we have to wait for the apple and plum blossoms to burst forth, heralding the beginning of the new season. Why do I always have to want things to hurry up and happen when they last such a short period of time and then it is on to the next part of the season?

My sister that lives in Texas enjoys her crape myrtles for months and I am so envious because we have such a short blooming season for our trees here.

 

Carol Hegel Lang is a green thumb residing in Albert Lea. Her column appears weekly. Email her at carolhegellang@gmail.com.