News from the Garden

Years ago I transplanted scraggly, once-landscaped plants from a weed-infested patch to a new bed nearer the house.  Among them were several columbine that reminded me of slender beauties that grew at the lake when I was a child.  Unfortunately they didn’t seem much happier in their new location, and produced only one or two blooms every season. 

Until this year.

Today I counted nearly fifty buds!  It’s hard to know if this is some sort of natural cycle, if they needed that much time to grow strong enough to support blooms, or if conditions are “just right.” More likely, several factors overlap. In any case, one flower has already opened, its head nodding demurely, its delicate face eyeing the earth.

With columbines claiming front-page status in late-breaking gardening news, hostas show up on page two.

Our perennial plots on either side of the house are small and intentionally relaxed rather than precisely laid out, and yet I love my plants.  I confess I am (maybe overly) protective, especially of the hostas. 

The newsworthy tidbit sadly involves damage.  Today I discovered a favorite hosta in a strategic spot by the doorway, freshly emerged after a long winter beneath the frozen ground, partially flattened - probably by a still-unidentified wild animal.   I’ve cheered it on since the first pencil-like points poked above the earth only a couple of weeks ago, and now THIS!!!

Live and let live, as the saying goes.  I just wish our hosta-mutilator would decide to live someplace else.