The smell of Spring

With it being spring, one of my favorite flowers is around in abundance, just not in our garden yet.  We planted a lilac last year and while it's grown, it's really too small for me to start trimming flowers for bouquets yet.  I can't wait until it's large and overflowing with blossoms, just like the ones at the house I grew up in.  I remember sitting under them and just loving the smell so much.  My bedroom smells lovely right now with 3 large vases full of them.

My mom has 2 good sized bushes in her garden though, so for the last three days, I've driven down and snipped about a million sprigs and have them in vases all over the house, much to the delight of our curious and troublesome siamese, Ruby. 

She loves them almost as much as I do, the only problem is she just wants to pull them from the vases and either eat them or scatter them around the house.  She's just too cute to get really angry with though, don't you think?

I also brought two large vases full to work to brighten up my desk, the atmosphere here has been pretty gloomy lately and it's rubbing off on me. I'm trying hard to keep smiling and not let the stress and conflict get to me.  It gets harder some days though. I just keep sniffing the blooms and counting the hours until I can go home and relax knowing my kids and my husband will be waiting to cheer me up.

Just me and my spring garden

Just Me. Oh, and my spring garden. I walk around each day, looking at what's growing, what new little thing that's popped up, what the wind or the squirrels have destroyed. Each day I find some new thing that is coming up, changing in some way. My ferns are all getting bigger, spreader their little feet and making new space for themselves. So many of my hostas are shooting up, even though it's a bit early for them. 

My wild oriental poppies are coming up slowly, but in a few weeks, they'll be leggy, delicate dark red blooms, waving at me every morning when I leave for work. My husband thinks they look like weeds, and they do a bit, that is until they bloom. And once they bloom, they are incredible, gorgeous and short lived. 

I've also got a couple of California poppies, but they bloom few and far between. I've got two of the tiniest little blooms coming through now. We've tried each year to start some from seed in a new part of the garden, they never take, hardly ever even poke tiny shoots up from the ground, but this year may be the year.  I put a few seed packets in, near our climbing rose and there are a few little green things sticking up.  Now either they are poppies or just more weeds, only time will tell.  I'm also trying some bachelor buttons and some more wild columbine.  I've got some bells of Ireland to plant somewhere, just haven't decided the spot for them yet.

The more I work (or rather, my husband works, as he says, I piddle) in our garden, the more I've come to love the different stages that plants go through as the seasons change. From our tiny English crocuses my mother-in-law sent me from England poking their tiny green grass-like leaves up through the snow and ice until they burst into bright yellow and purple blooms to the hardy climbing rose that never really dies back, there is something to look at all year round.

We've been working hard to make a perennial garden, fewer annuals each year and more plants that will come back every spring or summer. It's finally paying off!  We have so much spring color this year, with tulips, daffodils, hyacinths and crocuses scattered around.  The weird, warmer than usual spring has brought out my ferns and hostas earlier than usual and our irises have sprung up nearly 2 feet with bloom-heads already showing. We've got a decent sized patch of lilies that are coming up already and my clematis is growing so quick you could almost watch it climb the trellis.  My lavender is greening back up and the walkers low cat mint that I've spread everywhere is going to be bigger than ever this year. I love it, you can hack it apart, split it, ignore it and it still blooms all summer and into the fall.