garden

Virgil asks the fresh water nymph from Syracuse to help him write his tenth eclogue & thus complete & close his eclogue book. Fine for winding up a sequence of ten short poems, the plea doesn’t translate easily to the garden. Last chore? Which? What? When?
Take the pumpkin seedlings sprung from the single pumpkin vine that volunteered on our compost last summer. The seedlings threatened to colonize the entire new vegetable bed we dug last month, so they had to be moved now, Gail said. Why not put them in that space in front of the flag pole over in the southwest corner?
Why not? I had been plotting to use that space for specimen beds to try cultivating seeds collected in Leiden last fall, from the Hortus Clusianus. Only obstacle, the area was occupied by tall goldenrod & milkweed & a few left-over Japanese iris & anemone, some seedling winterberry & mulberry.
Pricked into action, I decided that the milkweed & shrubs could stay; so I started tugging away at the the goldenrod . Most of it came easily enough, sometimes bringing long rhizomes & a string of smaller stalks. Too often the stalk or the rhizome broke leaving roots from which new growth would recolonize.

Meanwhile today I saw the first sprout in the planters with seeds from Holland: Acanthus from the garden of a dealer in Rembrandt etchings in Middelburg. Still to come the white monkshood (Aconitum pyrenaicum) from the Middleburg Abdij cloister. But in that plot, the self-seeded radicchio big enough to get picked for salad, though the leaves turn out to be hairy & bitter. Two already about to go to seed again.
Peonies meanwhile dropping petals, though two pink one still coming on. But around the borders, orange Stella d’oro lilies beginning to open; while down along the lower bends of the bog, the yellow coreopsis are brilliant, interspersed with pink & red Sweet Williams.
Two hours later I had a stiff back, three barrow loads of goldenrod & plenty of ragweed that kept turning up. Then I had to redress the compost heap, bring some of the older material & uncomposted stalks to the top to cover the kitchen scraps. I was exhausted, but I still had to dig & carry the pumpkin plants. To fill their place in the vegetable patch, I put some seedling leeks that lacked a home. Then I dragged a hose to water, even though rain expected. (In fact now it’s nearly nine & raining hard.)
Still had two pots bought last week on way home from fiftieth reunion at Harvard: Arabis Fernandi, a groundcover with variegated leaf, & Sedum oreganum, also looking to cover ground. Doesn’t smell like oregano. Then dug Anemone candadensis to take to the neighbor in the city, who helped out when our terrace flooded.
Next chore may be fertilizing & spraying roses, since something has been gnawing the buds on the climbers, which are just beginning to occupy the trellis gates we installed last summer. But a friend has offered to dig for us the great yellow-green hosta ‘Sum & Substance’ along with Hay-scented ferns, maybe some Japanese anemone & some other hostas. If he does, that will take Saturday & Sunday.

The garden this year has been slower to change seasons & more dramatic when it does. When we got back April 9, the winter honeysuckle was still in fragrant flower out front, the witch hazel that arches above the bog still flying its jaunty orange flowerets; & snow drops just coming in the fern oval out by the road. Then came intense blue little scillas & then the poeticus narcissus with its orange circlet & the white Thalia with its trim cap.
It was still mid-April when I noticed one day in the bed by the back deck tiny white flowers with double prongs & delicate, deeply cut, leaves. It took me a moment to recognize Dutchmans breeches (Dicentra cucullaria), which I thought I had lost at the other house; but its roots may have come to this bed with the Cimicifuga racemosa that we moved.
By the time the narcissus were beginning to retreat, ferns were lifting their croziers & the hellebores opening their new flowers – the H. orientalis varieties in reddish purple & white (these latter by the front walk still lasting even in mid June). Out front in the south yard, both paw paws survived, but only the stronger grew the purple, dangling blossoms: all in vain, because the weaker plant managed only a few leaves & two are needed to set fruit. The pink azaleas chimed in together; & when they began to fade, the Helen Everett rhododendron took over the show.
Now the clematis have been blooming on the south fence & just outside in the rock garden, Thalictrum acquilegifolium & Bowman’s root in front of the paw paws, with Fever few & Tansy down at the futher end of the bed – white where the azaleas were pink last month.
Along the pool & in the bog, the spiderworts are varying their hues, from magenta, to pale blue, intense blue, white. The white & pink Hesperis are turning their flowers into spikey seed pods. Southern magnolia has more buds than ever before & unfurls one or two a day: I saw a honey bee rolling over in the pistels fallen on the petals, getting up, then lurching back as if drunk with pollen.
All around the lily buds are stiff & swelling, gallardias luxuriant. The next wave pushing for its share of the soil & sun, so that I have to decide who gets what share of the made compost & the light, who goes directly to join the obstreperous goldenrod on the compost pile. Will have to get another load of horse manure from the neighbor. Chores. Chores. P. obovata to be moved from shade to sun. Malva palustris to fill a bare corner by the deck. Also have to finish proofing the commentary & translation of the Bucolics & want to put on my homepage my recording of the Russian bells at Lowell house: last peal before they return to Russia..