Pollination or love at Springtime.

fredhatt.com

There they are sitting on the porch feasting on sunbeams half-wild, pollinated and almost abandoned.

Spring is covering everything with her yellow dust.  She has every plant in sight growing as if today is their last day of sunlight.  I have been working like a mad woman, washing walls, cleaning railings and scrubbing screens.  Even so, my porch is not a garden.  My porch is uninhabited.  Wherever I stand or sit down to rest, spring reminds me that summer is coming.  She keeps dumping that sallow powder in my hair and on my chair.

This time around, the realization of a porch garden has been a lesson in delayed gratification.  Its completion is an act of love, a pleasure, a luxury.  Yet I feel overwhelmed and almost beaten.  I am anxious.  It seems like the first time just happened, but every mother knows that that is not so.  I have simply forgotten.  Carefully I press on, working on my porch garden, hoping that it will be full of plants before spring exhales her last breath and summer inhales it.

The plants are out of place, pots upon pots and potting soil, my family is put out of place.  We have a house full of guests; they sit in all the sunniest spots.  It is just like a delay at an airport around Christmas, time.  They should only have been passing through yet here they are.  A big beauteous mess of freshness greeting you every time you pass by.  Egg box seedlings, houseplants, sun lovers, herbs and vegetable plants are everywhere.  New slips and old slips some with roots and others without.  The connecting flight to destination unfinished is me.  They are all waiting for me to open the back door to the Porch Garden.

Yes, I am quite aware.  This is my idea, my space, my air.

The captivating Paeonia Lactiflora or love at first sight

Wikimedia Commons

I recently met a Chinese Peony while out shopping.  It happened on a nice day in the gardening area of our favorite store.  We were shopping for seeds, from my special list called the living list.  I got lavender, spinach, corn and some mixed flowers.  We entered the super Walmart store through the gardening section.  This is normal for my family.  Racks and racks of seeds so plentiful, how many different types of corn is there?  This business of mine the selecting of seeds, the living list, where lavender is necessary for sight and for smell and spinach goes so well with rice.  Corn is my welcomed guest.  Present at every occasion of the summer.

My sister called me across the room away from the many types of same things and introduced me to Paeonia Lactiflora, saying.  Smell her perfume.  Look at her flowers.  What lovely curvy leaves.  Her flowers were a soft white, kissed with a suggestion of pink.  Each one the size of a standard cup cake.  With two stems twisted, candy stripe like, around stabilizing sticks 3/4 of an inch in diameter she stood four feet tall.  This picturesque flora was like a sweet-scented dream come true to my nose.  I could not leave the peony’s side.  I even introduced her to a total stranger.  Who walked away and left me to feel stranger.  Weird or not resistance was futile.  Paeonia Lactiflora and her twin sister now live with me.  When I pass a Peony in bloom, it will always be while inhaling with my mouth open.

Changing the sheets or Replacing sweet comfort with careless luxury.

tp-trading.co.uk

Spring is here.  Summer is coming and I am glad that winter has left.  It is getting hot and turning green outside.  My big blankets are starting to keep me too warm.  Last night I stripped my bed of the fluffy green winter sheets, the ones that make me feel as if wrapped in a cocoon of sweet comfort.  I dressed my bed for the summer in regular cotton sheets the color of sand with circle patterns big and small.  When I looked down at the bed that I had just made a feeling of gratitude took me to my knees.  Mine are Blissful prayers.  As I lay in bed smiling and thinking about why I was feeling so happy the only thing that came to mind is the change in seasons.

 

Green has not always been my favorite color, so the symptoms of the deficiency surprised me.  In the springtime, I feel a great sense of hope, like an expectant mother.  Every morning I get out of bed, look out of my window, and smile at the subtle changes.  By the time summer arrives, I am fierce and full of energy, like the big strong baobab tree, I find myself gloriously centered.  Than the leaves begin to turn, signaling the end of summer.

Disappointment comes at me in full force, autumn in all her beauty has come.  A compelling urge to dress myself in all these colors consumes me.  I daydream of commissioning a beautiful autumn colored winter coat.  My thoughts and conversations are of the coming season “will we be having a calm or bitter winter this year?”.  In the winter, I experience a sadness that I medicate by doing nice things for myself, like spiking my morning coffee.  The entire season I spend eating homemade cakes and pies.  Thank God for Christmas.  Rugs and throws in every room and cheerful music on the radio.  Winter is spent waiting, waiting for spring to come again, waiting for the green.

The Porch Garden

fineartamerica.com

I have always been attracted to flowers and greenery even as a child.  It was not long before I realized that if I was having bad days and I went through the greenhouse section of a store, I would perk right up.  All the flowers and plants there had the simple effect of making me smile; the scents helped me to breathe when I didn’t even know that I was holding my breath.  Being among plants feed my soul.  My senses of touch, smell, sight, taste just come alive. Now I only go to green houses in the winter and in the summer I keep a porch garden.

Spring has just began, and it is time to get work started on the porch garden.  Last year the garden was home to plumb tomatoes and big beef tomatoes.  They were so delicious.  All of my house plants found themselves outside.  Rosemary and her friends Sage, Oregano, Mint and Sweet-basil made life in the little garden on the porch wonderful and fragrant.  The children learned to name, recognize and care for all the plants that lived there.

My sister Jacky our family chef cooked lots of special foods with the materials from our garden.  We had the daily pleasure of walking out to the porch-garden/Sanctuary for coffee or just to pick 3 sprigs of mint to add to a jug of lemonade at dinner time.  This was incredible for us because we lived on the third floor.  When the frost came in it was miserable and a bit depressing knowing we would soon be inside for the winter.  The frost damaged some plants and the apartment could not support the herbs so we ended up losing those as well.  Our apartment was just too small and dark.

We moved last November and even though our new place is bigger we are still on the third floor.  Here I feel like a rich woman when I sit in my empty living room and survey the square footage.  Blossoms, foliage and more Plant life are my big plan.  In the spring time I will have greenery, in the summertime too and Greenery in the fall and if I have my way in this house with all these windows and space, I will have a green and white winter.  Imagine that, happiness in the winter.

The new porch is large, 7 feet wide and 16 feet long, it has great potential.  We have a lot of work to do before this new porch can be called “The garden”.  The last tenants where not kind to the place.  They kept a dog on the porch, but did not keep him well.  When we moved in here it was cold, and now that it is getting warm it has also become the time to clean away the smell of dog and the mess.  The first thing we will need to do is empty the area and clean it with a scrub brush and lots of soap and water.  There is outdoor carpeting, the green grass stuff, the new landlord said it is in good condition.  The cleaning will tell.  This is an exciting time, I have to remember to save more egg containers for the tomato seeds and get potting soil for all the new slips I have been taking from the house plants.