But all my life--sofar-- I have loved best how the flowers rise and open, ~ Mary Oliver

Thou didst not know, who tottered, wandering on high,
That fate had made thee for the pleasure of the wind,
With those great careless wings,
Nor yet did I.
~ Robert Frost

There is so much blooming now. I want to record it all but not in just one posting.

A couple years ago I purchased a few small clematis at Home Depot for a ridiculously low price--something like $3.50 each. It was a whim, I wanted to try growing them on roses. Unfortunately that doesn't work well in northern Illinois. In the spring, when the super hardy clematis is up and blooming, northern roses are only about two feet tall. Not a good paring. This poor blue climber puddles at the feet of Austin rose Abe Darby. It looks well enough just winding along the ground among the other plants. Every now and then a blue patch appears at the feet of a lily or a foxglove.

I was really taken with photos of a tall bearded iris named GnusFlash. It's a black and white striped iris, very striking. Anyway I purchased Gnusflash and got this. It's lavender where the real GF is white and white where it should be black. Oh well;)

This is iris time, yellow, powder blue, lavender, pink, white and black. The view from any window features their fluttering silken petticoats.

I can't walk out of a garden center empty handed. Another whim and something I didn't need--but it was so pretty. How could anyone turn away from a silver leaved, pink flowered little charmer like this lamium Pink Pewter? (Funny, those were almost exactly the same words I used on my mother as a child when I came home with another stray dog.)


Below old faithful Superstition iris and a pink self seeded columbine. Superstition was the first iris I added to my garden almost 20-years ago when I moved here.

Too green the springing April grass,
Too blue the silver-speckled sky,
For me to linger here, alas,
While happy winds go laughing by,
Wasting the golden hours indoors,
Washing windows and scrubbing floors.
Too wonderful the April night,
Too faintly sweet the first May flowers,
The stars too gloriously bright,
For me to spend the evening hours,
When fields are fresh and streams are leaping,
Wearied, exhausted, dully sleeping.

~ Claude McKay

A winter garden

Frozen toes and fingers are forgotten in the magic of a winter garden. Fanciful shapes and sculpture created at the whim of whirling winds. Diamonds dusted atop pristine white. Prisms of ice reflecting color back into the light.


Most of last season is covered and hidden. Only the occasional blackened, withered foliage left to hold a place against the coming of spring.



Mary Oliver's words capture a little of the eerie silence and unnatural light of a snowfall.



The First Snow
~ Mary Oliver

The snow
began here
this morning and all day
continued, it's white
rhetoric everywhere
calling us back to why, how,
whence such beauty and what
the meaning; Such
an oracular fever? Flowing
past windows, an energy it seemed
would never ebb, never settle.
Less than lovely? And only now,
deep into night,
it has finally ended.
The silence
is immense,
and the heavens still hold
a million candles; nowhere
the familiar things;
Stars, the moon,
the darkness we expect
and nightly turn from. Trees
glitter like castles of ribbons, the broad fields
smolder with light, a passing
creekbed lies
heaped with shining hills;
and through the questions
that have assailed us all day
remain--not a single
answer has been found--
walking out now
into the silence and the light
under the trees,
and through the fields,
feels like one.

A tiny snowbird suns himself on the russet stalks of Autumn Joy.