Be Still My Sentimental Heart

I was anxious to finally get out and work in the garden today for a bit. Every year around this time I almost explode with optimism at the thought of a fresh start in the garden. It's always a challenge to get things back into shape and every year I learn something new. It looks like a few of our plants and shrubs did not survive the bitter winter; others show signs of significant winter burn. But I'm hopeful and waiting to see if they recover. Anything can happen at any time I've learned. You almost have to trust in miracles.

 

I read that if you shave a little off the stalk with your nail and it's green underneath, then it will recover. This rose bush has some green and a few buds growing so I'm not giving up on it yet.

Maybe I'm naive, but there's no way you can have a garden and NOT be optimistic. Remembering that only fifteen years ago there were no flowers and few pretty plants at all in this backyard  - just grass and dirt and a few hostas - keeps me going every year. Despite the shade and poor soil, I was determined to grow a garden and I did. Every year I try new things, new plants, and it evolves into something different. Some year I hope to have a cottage garden in the sunny front. I figure if  I can hang onto my optimism it just may happen.
 

  

The man who has planted a garden feels that he has done something good for the world.

-Charles Dudley Warner

 

I was pleasantly surprised a few weeks ago to see one of my Bleeding Heart plants peeping up from the ground. It's a plant I've always loved (Romantic me. I'm a Sentimental Gardener too, I guess.) and while I've bought more than a few of them over the years and tried planting them in different locations, I've never had one that would bloom for me. Yet, for some silly reason I've never given up. So, even though I've have had a hard time growing them successfully, I tried it again two years ago and bought a few from a trusted local gardener at her perennial sale. Plants from a real gardener's garden and not from a greenhouse - how could I lose?  For the first time, I was able to grow them. They seemed to be doing well and flourished for 2 years in a row. But I was still afraid they were too delicate to have survived this winter's Polar Vortex. 

 

 

Then, a week after the plants appeared in April, a bright green spot in the brownness of my yard, I let the dog out and in her excitement at chasing a squirrel she bypassed the path and trampled one of the plants. Ran right over it and broke the stems.  Oh!  You can imagine how my heart sank. I didn't yell - it was my own fault since I should not have planted them so close to the path in the first place. Looking at the little crushed thing it had become, only a portion of it salvageable, I was sure I'd get no blooms from it at all this year.  In a fit of  hopefulness though, I put up a small wire garden fence to avoid any more puppy mishaps. A few days ago, I noticed the perfect little pink hearts bopping around on the stems. They're back!

 

 

Gardening is a humbling experience.  -Martha Stewart

I love my bleeding hearts more than any other plant in the garden and what a thrill it was to see that this one came back from near decimation after all. All hearts should be this resilient after being trampled . . . . There's a multitude of life lessons in a garden.

 

Grow what you love. The love will keep it growing. 

-Emilie Barnes

Now, let's see if the lilacs make an appearance again. They were stupendous last spring for the first time in years and I'm counting on them to give me another lovely show very soon. My heart is depending upon it.

At the heart of gardening there is a belief in the miraculous.  -Mirabel Osler