RENEWAL

I can't recall a spring when I was so awakened by the changes in nature.
Perhaps because it came so early and fast, perhaps I am calmer now ,perhaps my soul is yearning for what is real.

Walking the dogs I see dozens of tiny flowers cropping up all over the place.
Between grasses, rocks, cement, woodchips, they are everywhere.
I bend over to pick a sample and think that it is a shame that we call these weeds.
In some books they may be classified as wild flowers but within a few months the
weed killers will come out and kill so we can just see the plants we bought and meticulously put in just the right spot.

I would so love to let the whole garden grow wild but I am not in the country and I have people with well manicured lawns measured to the right amount of inches just looking around wondering what I will do this year.

Asked Frank how to plant all wild flowers in the back yard and then I read about it and to do it right it takes a lot of work, it would have to be tilled and then
seeded just right, oh Please!!!!!

A decade ago when the first Mexican farm workers came to live here I remember that the lawns in front of their houses were usually unattended. Gossip followed about lazy people etc...etc...but a friend of mine who lived in Mexico for 15 years and was married there to an architect, she decided to talk to the newcomers and explain to them what North Carolinians were used to. They in turn told her that they never had a lawn before just flowers and plants here and there, perhaps too hot or not enough water to sustain the lush greens. Now most of them have followed the
unwritten rules "cut your lawn"!

I have done away ,lasr year, with one small lawn, covered it with plastic and then red bark and dozens of pots with hostas, looks like I am going to sell them, I do not care I like that better than the spotted lawn.
The hostas are already about 5 inches high and doubling in each pot, they survived the non winter with splendid color.

I enjoy my dogwood in bloom, Bob's voice resonated in my heart :"You know, dear, they say we are having a virus with our dogwoods, better we cut this one down"
I answered:"Over my dead body!" and he said "OK".
a dozen or more years later the dogwood is still blooming and growing.

My mother in law in Santa Cruz CA. loved dogwoods but they did not last in that climate except one was planted in the Santa Cruz Mountains in Ben Lomond and every spring we had to take her to see the tree up close.
This morning I thought of her, (Mom come and take a look).

I have plants with meanings. There is the Lily ,Rand gave me one year.
There are the pink Lily of the Valley a dying man gave me from his garden and told me:Dear, I do not need these where I go. Every year I think of him when they pop up and they are popping now 4 weeks early.
Bobby while in High School and giving me some headaches gave me a bleading heart plant, how apropos, it finally died a few years ago. Rhonda gave me an ornamental kind of low spruce and it is sitting by the water feature. Sabrina gave me several plants last year and they are all coming back but she gave me this 4 pots making one tower and soon they will be full of flowers.

I have shamrocks in a pot since 1976, I neglect them and talk to them and they always come back!!!!I should feed them one of these days!

Very tired last December I found a bag with some tulip bulbs grandson Nick had given me, I forgot to put them in before. Exhausted I made a big hole in the side yard and dumped the bulbs in a group, not even sure if I put them right side up,
today they are all blooming. I thanked them for their patience.

Renewal, a great spring, an early spring, lets hope the cold stays away.
Last year in April we had a deep frost....I have lots of towers and sheets so they will have to come out if this happens again.......