Seeking Beauty

Happy days in the gardens. Everything is growing, blooming, or getting ready to bloom. Even the pansies that I put in for winter color are having a go at spring. It will be interesting to see how long I can make them last in their spots beneath the big oaks. I bought them as a lark and because I never get deer in my yard, once a long time back, but I blocked the access point, and now they just look.

Of course, I have a hefty crop of silverleaf nightshade, and that’s a pest that needs to go. Today, might be a good day to give it a try. The air is cool, the ground moist, and I feel in a digging mood, which basically means, I want to kneel in the dirt and pull things up. Therapy? Perhaps. I suppose it would be if I were pretending it was a personal trouble I was uprooting. But it’s just a plant that got started and needs to go.

Another plant that got started and is welcome to stay are the wild onions, which is a wispy-leafed version of the spiderworts and adds a certain amount of grace to the landscape. This morning, on my walkabout, I notice buds have formed which means blooms, and that will be exciting. And it is certainly nice to be home in my garden even if I have spied work to do because I’ve also spied beauty and there’s an eternal pleasure to the latter that is impossible to deny, which, I suppose, is why we grow plants in the first place.  

John W. Wilson is the author of The Long Goodbye: A Caregiver’s Tale