Just in from gardening–I finally found time to do a little weeding, pruning dead stuff, and what ever. Just this last week I could actually distinguish live branches on the rose bushes and clematis. The heat wave dried up most of the early blooming daffodils and knocked out the dwarf tulips. So I found myself deadheading those. A little tweaking here and there and the garden looks good again–I can relish the lilac and notice the other delights .All the while serenaded by birds. I could see the red-wing black birds so I know their sweet song contributed to the mix. Yellow finches, cardinals, and others visit my feeders regularly so I figure the finches might be filling the chorus as well. No time for a camera as I worked to beat the forecast rain yet I noticed the laceleaf maple’s scarlet buds descending from the pale green new leaves, the spruce has cones and the early clematis is fully budded–any day now the splendor of its pink blossoms will enthrall me from my living room window. The mertensia’s halcion blue tempts me to pick one and see how it holds as a cut flower in a vase. Speaking of mertensia, one of the reasons I’m behind in my garden therapy–the sniping and the tidying while smelling and hearing wonderful things that restores my sense of harmony with nature and beyond– is because I was visiting my APLD design colleague and buddy, Shannon Hackett, in NYC last weekend and we were exploring Central Park on the first warm weekend day of spring that also happened to be a heat wave! The phase “eye candy” works well for what I saw. Just a few hours south of me and Wow! mertensia (Virginia bluebells), hellebore (Lenten roses), daffodils, and more planted in huge waves. And that was just in park beds along the paths we and a million other people were traveling. The Conservatory Gardens, the only formal garden withing Central Park, designed and rescued by Lynden Miller were even more amazing. Enjoy a few of the photos.
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