One Day In May

Gardeners are busy people.  Pruning, planting, mulching, mowing and countless other jobs have us working like a baby bird’s parents.  How about just walking around and admiring the fruits of our labors?  On the last weekend of May, I took a stroll on my own 1.3 acres to simply enjoy.

The front yard “rock garden” (a poor example of the genre, since it contains no alpine plants) is home to a lovely patch of dwarf crested iris.  Only a few inches tall, the lovely pale blue blossoms with gold-crested falls make a tiny patch of sky fallen to earth.  Nearby, the sometimes thuggish Ajuga reptans is also in bloom, with attractive electric purple-blue spikes.  The ajuga is kept in check by even more vigorous sedums, and as a sedum fan, I think they can’t do much wrong.  Residing on the corner of the house is a large Doublefile Viburnum with tiers of snowy-white flowers.  This particular plant is plagued with a mild case of branch canker dieback, but looks good today, so I won’t fret.

The gravel driveway hosts compaction-tolerant weeds as well as a few pioneer perennials.  Escaping rich soil for poor, blue fescue clumps happily self-sow in a small patch I back over with my truck every day.  They just don’t care.  Gardening websites prescribe rich, compost-amended soil and plenty of moisture for tall bleeding heart (Dicentra spectabilis), but at my place they volunteer to line the driveway, abandoning better digs in the backyard.  

The perennial garden out back reaches peak color in mid-summer, but a few plants are looking showy now.  Big-root geranium, in both palest pink and darker pink hues, is a bomb-proof perennial groundcover with a short flowering period but good foliage continuously.  New Hampshire Purple geranium is another stalwart, growing to about 12 inches high and 18 inches wide, and produces deep pink flowers sporadically all season.  John Elsley (the perennial geranium, not the gentleman) is even shorter, at 6 inches tall, with similar flowers.  Both these cultivars are called “bloody cranesbills” for their deep-red autumn foliage and pointy seedpods.  Mourning widow geranium has attractive deep maroon-purple flowers, but unfortunately she is rather promiscuous, sowing herself a little too freely for my taste, but I let her stay.  I’ve had all these plants over twenty years running, making hardy geraniums one of my better garden investments.

A brief but welcome display is offered by a small patch of Camassia, bulbous plants from the western U.S.  Their floral spikes of vivid blue, star-like blossoms are an annual treat and take me out west to Utah without leaving Schodack.  Pagoda dogwoods, a native understory tree, are dotted with clusters of tiny, creamy-while flowers on their wedding-cake layers of branches.  And in the smell-it-before-you-see-it department, quirky umbrella magnolia is covered with bowl-shaped blooms of up to 10 inches across atop its two-foot long leaves. 

Each day in the garden is beautiful and different; slow down to see it.