False Starts and Tiny Pleasures

 

I have come to think of spring as a parade. 

From the time the first crocus pops out of the ground it’s as if color is marching into town.

Hellebores, Daffodils, Forsythia, Quince, Hyacinths, Bradford Pear trees, Redbud trees, Flowering Crabapples, Tulips and on and on…….

Then there are days like Saturday.

It’s cold, it’s cloudy… IT’S MARCH ….I keep forgetting that!

And so the weekday evenings I spent picking up leaves and dreaming of the things I would do this weekend were well just that – dreams.

False starts – they can really mess with your head if you let them.

So, I’m writing this from inside my garden house looking out onto all that potential.

Reveling in the tiny pleasures. 

Grape hyacinths

                                                                                                          with pansies

                                                                                                                                                        and violas keeping them company along the path to the garden house.

The Red Bud and Crabapple trees in glorious bloom on Cleveland just north of the railroad tracks.
What I’m most concerned about this week are my Belinda’s Dream roses. 

I have over a dozen of them strung throughout my backyard garden and along the fence on the east side of my yard.

With the exception of the three I planted new last year ALL are 90% dead to the ground I think. 

I’ve not pulled the manure back – waiting for this last cold spell to pass – but it looks like the green is from the bottom of the plant. 

So…I did what every good gardener does….call a fellow gardener.

Kelly – my neighbor and friend – lives just down the block. 

Kelly knows roses.  She’s taught me much of what I know on the subject.

She’s always a comfort at times like this….until today.

When I called and told my sad tale she said that she has one rose that has done the same thing.

Her question is…well…frightening. 

If they come back from the root will they be my beloved Belinda’s Dream or the unknown rootstalk!

That thought had never occurred to me.  I could have a garden of perish the thought RED roses!

Daddy must be laughing right now.

He always told me that RED was the only color of roses that God created.

The rest are an unfortunate intervention of human kind. 

So now the great waiting game begins.

When the weather warms up I’ll cut off the dead – pull back the manure and give them that drink of epsom salts that I mentioned last week. 

Then I’ll wait.

There’s a lesson in this somewhere.

I’m guessing it goes something like…..

You can fiddle with nature. 

You can likely get away with it for sometime.

But in the end we are not in control. 

It’s nature….God is not only in the details….he’s in control.

Much better hands than mine.

Be patient…Spring really is just around the corner.

Gail