Rewarded

Deep Purple with Black Velvet inner petals

I've never really seen the inside of this flower.  I was eager last week for the discovery.  Delphinium, this purple one at least, is regal enough to be queen (gracious thoughts to Queen E yesterday, today and for the two days after).

Black satin beads in the center.  

I'm away visiting and helping my mother for this week.  Find a sweet post here from the past to read.  Then find someone's mother to visit and help out this week.  Feel your heart open with love and compassion for all the Things you get to do today and everyday this week.  See you on Saturday!

Anticipation

Glistening Delphinium ready to pop

They are ready to burst open!  And I'm watching.  It's like a slow-motion fireworks display with the intensity of color and vibrance and life building and building until it explodes in glory.  Oh, my!

Single Peony gifted from a friend

Loving this time of year is on my Things I get to do today--everyday--spending time in the yard and garden in a state of open gratitude, appreciation and observation while drinking in the glorious being of each plant's structure and flowers.  The variety is beyond comprehension, and the display is breath-taking.

Honeysuckle--a ruby challis

Find your own place to sit with something that grows outside under the Divine canopy and allow its elegance and magnificence to soothe and feed your soul.

Clary Sage.  I've never seen its flowers before.  So eager am I!

Blessings for your day.

Signs

I used to do it every year somewhere around the 21st.  The 21st sounds like spring.  My thing was that I usually started looking for signs of it around the 21st of January or the 21st of February.  By March the signs were the size of billboards so it was silly to say you were looking.  By then everybody could see it.

Raspberry sorbet in its infancy

So it was shocking to me this morning as I was sweeping and vacuuming and generally tidying up in the hen yard (hyperbole intended for those of you who may think I'm over the top on this neatness thing) that the raspberry canes were wriggling out vigorous shoots that would soon be branchlets 18" long with leaves and flowers and then soft, fat, sweet, warm berries, all this tucked into a slow motion explosion of life.

 Brunnera
  First out and last in--a full-season bloomer

A quick take around: the yard indeed looked like a billboard worthy of spring documentation.

Striped Iris

Tulip cup filled to the brim with Oregon rain

Lush moss

This is the most heady of Things I get to do today:  "page" through the leaves of my own yard "catalog" and bask in the elegant rush of life on all sides--Spring.

A dance of Delphiniums

Day Lilies

Win, Win, Win

Sorrel before the hens were let out

Chicken scratching is a mixed bag. Those strong legs and toenails till the soil.  They unearth bugs, worms, and grubs.  They remove weeds and keeps the tiniest of sprouts from growing.  They rip the top off of tender perennial shoots that are brave enough to press their faces toward the sky and push at this time of year.  Herein lies the rub.

Ten minutes after the hens were out:  I am not making this up.

 
Not the rhubarb, nor the delphiniums, nor the peonies, nor the hardy geraniums, nor the sorrel appreciate this treatment.  Animal training isn't my current strong point, so there's little hope for getting the girls to carefully tend just around the edges of my favorites leaving the plant itself alone. I'm certain that the scratch impulse does not come anywhere close to what might be called a chicken brain.*

Very vulnerable Delphinium shoots

But GardenGateNotes.com had a fabulous solution just waiting for me. Make a little cage from flexible branches/long twig prunings.  Of course, the materials are just hanging out in my yard waiting my awareness.  We have red-twig dogwood that does best with a severe pruning every year.  The "chop us to the ground" task has been begging me to be on the Things I get to do today show for several months.




Mean while, Katy, Nora, Lena, Latifah, and Nina were all very sweetly asking for a romp in the yard this afternoon.  I'm seeing all the fresh beginnings in shards about the yard if I comply.  That is until I recalled the tip from Garden Gate.

Delphinium wins.

Clippers in hand, a few minutes with the dogwood, more clipping to length and to remove side twigs and I'm ready to go.  The hens visited along side while I fiddled and wove the twigs together.  I win!

Chickens win.






*There is some one-sided debate in our house over whether or not such an organ does, in deed, exist.

Sorrel wins.