Spring

The very idea of spring and its many wonders should be apparent in the garden by now, but alas - it is once again blanketed in white and as ethereal as this impossible to grasp tulip. On the few days in between snow melts - spring thoughts are obscured by the hard, dry yet icy, cracked earth without even a snowdrop or such measly ones that they don't count. It is merely the occasional confluence of faith and few determined-to-flower hellebores faintly pushing their luminous buds upward -----that keeps hoe alive. Oooof that new growth....

It's not news that language associated with the garden fascinates me. Not only the botanical Latin that I am forever trying to master, but the insistent onomatopoeic reminders that spring is here...the throbbing of the little Iris reticulata struggling to unfurl, the pushing up of those indomitable daffodil clumps, buds breaking - almost crackling.....that's what I'm waiting for...

Words that echo sounds are wonderful...listen to this, or better to hear/feel it - say it aloud...

Here are cool mosses deep,

And through the moss the ivies creep,

And in the stream the long-leaved-flowers weep,

And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep.

That's from the Song of the Lotos-Eaters by the ever-popular Victorian, Alfred Lord Tennyson. Even if I never succeed with a blue poppy - that Meconopsis is ever more elusive after so many tries - I cherish these sounds and adore the title of this poem.