The Bluebird of Happiness just visited. He pecked on the window and retreated to the witch-hazel outside my office window, framed perfectly by the grey bark and dusky red flowers of Hamamelis x ‘Diane’ . He sat still for me to take his picture. Pecking on the back window now.
One thinks of Chuck Bukowski’s poem ~ There’s a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out. . . . Just like I feel after this long winter.
Trees in the hollow are still bare, but Forsythia has been in bloom for several weeks now, the bright gold wands just beginning to fade, and the daffodils are peaking. Scorned by native plant lovers and sustainability soldiers, Forsythia will always be a welcome icon of Spring to me and performs at least the humble environmental service of sheltering myriad birds and generations of rabbits.
We are having a lovely long daffodil season, started off last month with the miniature cheery ‘Tete-a-Tete’, a bright yellow ideal for marking pathways and edges, through mid-season King Alfred types with their iconic screaming yellow trumpets, nicely toned down with ‘Ice Follies’, a white and pale yellow large-cup variety with a similar bold substance, excellent for cutting.
‘Ice Follies’
Fragrant Triandrus types like ‘Thalia’ and the Tazetta ‘Geranium’ fill a room with their perfume. The season winds down with a variety of late-bloomers: ‘Segovia’, ‘Hawera’, ‘Sun Disc’ and the latest of all, old “Twin Sisters” (N. x biflorus, a wild hybrid of N. poeticus var. recurvus and N. tazetta.)
I bring out Brent and Becky Heath’s indispensable Daffodils for American Gardens each Spring and refresh my memory.
Now is also the time for fresh flower salads with the violets and dandelions beginning to bloom (tender young leaves are great sources of Vitamin C and calcium); redbud blossoms, like little pink and white peas, are also good. Susan Tyler Hitchcock’s Gather Ye Wild Things is a great inspiration.
Common Violet
Spring keeps pecking at our hearts until we let it in.