Call Me Miriam: Open(ing) up

Each day I inspect my garden...at least once.

What I hope comes up again this year.

I walk to the front of the house and see what has come up overnight by the mailbox and the street. The daffodils have come and gone. The fritillaria have their little blue belled flowers stacked along the their stems, which have all fallen over into the grass from weight and wind and rain. The iris leaves are green swords rising from the Earth like the underside of the stone in which Excalibur was thrust. A single red and white striped tulip survived my planting of many similar bulbs six or seven years earlier. The rest have likely rotted or been eaten by moles whose homes I trip over every time I walk through the yard.


The precursors to this year's single, stunted tulip.

The flowerbeds by the house are overflowing with ever-increasing daylily leaves, lazily flopping over next to their stiffer cousins, the irises. A single iris bud has formed in the bed under the living room window. That bed is home to gorgeous and gag-worthy iris color combinations. It will be a surprise to find out which will emerge. It could be one of the frilly pink guys, or one of the variegated tan numbers. Let's hope it's a purple and white or yellow blossom. Honestly, I'll be happy with any of them. Geez, it's like I'm pregnant with them or something. "I'll love my flowers no matter what color combinations they show when they open up."

Will the mystery blossom be a purple one or the tri-color weirdo up front?

Moving on, the bed on the other side of the front door is home to what will soon be peonies. The white ones are just fronds pushing their way skyward through a layer of tulip poplar leaves I patently refused to rake or mow last fall, knowing that they'd get blown by nature into their true homes, as mulch for my flowers. The pink peonies are thigh high and growing, the buds are multiplying daily and within a week or two they should show the world their seemingly endless array of petals, perfuming the air and attracting a long line of ants to their fruity centers. The daylilies and irises in that bed are spreading out and digging in, making their bed and lying in it.

There's the peonie last year...with far fewer blossoms...and later in the spring.

Once I've seen what's new and wonderful in the front of the house, I check out the back yard and vegetable bed. Last fall I meant to plant a full bed of garlic. Interest and reality did not merge. Somehow, however, despite my lack of actual gardening, my garden is completely full of garlic. I don't mean one side of the garden, I mean the whole, giant bed. All 6'x20+' of it. Some are tiny nubs of single cloves just beginning to make their mark as actual plants. The others are clearly going to be meaningful heads of garlic, eventually to make their way into hummus, stir fries, pickles and sauces over the course of 2014/15.

2012's garlic harvest.

These daily inspections are currently without the need for watering. Spring in Nashville is still maintaining reasonable temperatures and enough rain to make my hoses and rain barrel obsolete. June, July, August, September and October will be different, but for now I can spend as much time as I like in my garden, admiring the hard work of previous years that I put in each weekend, surrounding my home with beauty the calms my nerves and feeds my soul.