There has been some small progress on the garden front. Very little of the effort was mine and yet I am as proud and happy as can be. The garden is spruced up for spring at least as spruced as it is likely to get this spring.
I feel like the yard has donned its Easter dress.
Saturday morning I gathered up all the little plants that have been languishing in the shady corners, since the spring of 2021 when I had ordered several dozen small plants intending to make headway on the front gardens. There were a few bigger plants as well. Some of them had rooted through their pots into the soil and so a little bit of digging was involved. My labor conisisted of uprooting them all and placing them wherever I had originally planned to plant them.
A crew came and planted them Saturday afternoon. Monday morning they came back and mulched. Above is a mix of old and new and yet undone. Gardens are mostly like that.
The remnants of winter pansies and drift roses.
Some tiny green flecks of alchemilla mollis between the peonies and the grass (above right). Another peony, which had been sheltering behind the garage, in a shady but protected spot, was also transplanted, far right in front of the hydrangeas. It has leafed out further than the ones I planted in this same bed last spring, where it is sunnier but more exposed. Some of my neighbors' peonies have buds. I do not, yet.
This is the older bed, between my driveway and the neighbor on the East. A few more nepeta plants were added.
I keep singing "Easter Parade" when I am in the yard.
There is still a lot to design and plant, and I have come to terms with the idea that I am not going to do it. I am already working with a designer but it will likely be at least fall before further progress is made. I don't intend to do much but clean out the overgrown vegetable garden in the back. It is included in this photo because I have some perverse inclination to acknowledge and celebrate the failures and imperfections as well as the successes.
I am all for celebrating beauty and joy. But beauty and joy are not everything. Life is tough. Things break. And yet we still bloom and grow.
That previous sentence sounds like some sappy theme from The Sound of Music, or a book blurb.
There remain more empty spaces than plants, but I am ok with that. I have already given myself permission not to fret, and not to plant this year. In fact that is more like an order -- "do not plant". Wait and see. Oh, I know there will be exceptions. I will pick up something here or there and be unable to risk the possibility of putting it in the ground.
There is no rush and there is also no such thing as an instant garden.