new life . . . in the garden

It happens to me every year--I am amazed by how much pure joy I get out of plants shooting through the ground. This year is especially exciting because I have a garden that I am not overly familiar with that is full of new possibilities. When we moved in last June, the garden had been untended for over two years. It was overgrown. And being June, it was past the time of the season when I could do much more than maintenance.

When we moved, I brought starts of some of my favorite plants--tall phlox, echinecea, violas.  I had attempted to transplant my Nanny's beloved peony (the peony she planted nearly 45 years before that I took with me when I moved from her house to my first house with Alan) only to have it die on me in the pot it came in.  I even brought a start of the blackberry bush that had kept me in luscious berries for four years.

And since I couldn't do much last year, this year, I was ready. I enlisted Alan and Juan and even Alex to help pull away debris, get rid of leaves (even though we still have a ton more) and tear out fledgling saplings. I waited through the long, cold winter in hopes of things to come.

I knew that the man and woman who loved our house before (not the short-term interlopers who used this house as a stop-over of sorts) had taken extremely good care of the garden. They had tended it with a mix of an old-lady air and an educated gardener's eye. I knew if I was patient, I would reap the rewards.

Over the past few weeks, my patience have been rewarded. A carpet of violas covers the majority of my old lady garden with thriving hostas, lily of the valley, and tiger lilies protruding through. I have two beautiful Japanese maples, purple and white clematis, creeping phlox, vinca, peonies, teacup roses, a whole wall of foxglove and delphinium, not to mention the daylilies and the strawberries! To this amazing garden, I will add hibiscus, tall phlox, gerber daisies, hydrangea, and lilac. I have started seeds for my herb garden that will have parsley, mint, basil, oregano, chives, lavendar, thyme, and cilantro.  For Alan's grandmother, I will add geraniums in the planter we brought from Spain.

But perhaps the center of my garden will be my Nanny's peony that somehow weathered its transplant and pushed up from its pot, healthier than it has been in five years! I think Nanny would approve.