A picotee double hellebore (Helleborus x hybridus)

It’s here — the day my website goes online and I attempt to write my first blog.  Very daunting for someone who isn’t very technologically adept.  One of my goals for the year is to learn more about technology, how it works and what works for me.  Can’t imagine that I’ll ever Twitter and haven’t ever seen Facebook — seems like a lot to explore.

Blogging makes sense to me though.  As a writer I think I’ll relish being able to write about what I want — when I want — snippets and bits about my passion for all things horticultural — anytime the muse or a random thought strikes. Don’t yet know the form or direction of the blog.  Time will tell.

Am impatient for spring — after a winter of varied and weird weather, a country in turmoil and a world where the senseless seems to prevail — I yearn for the comfort of rebirth in the garden.  It never fails to nurture, encourage and enlighten.

Emerging snowdrops (Galanthus plicatus)

The emergence of snowdrops helps banish the winter vapors.  Am amazed by the might of these petite offerings as they explode from the soil — bulldozing their way to the surface, flowers at the ready.  Hope survives.

The radiance of a stray sunbeam warms the lemon-yellow bundled blooms on the witch hazel in the back garden releasing its pungent cistrus scent — I inhale and exhale lungs filled with euphoria — it is coming. 

Hellebores ease the tension as I walk the wall garden greeting chalices face to face — a pink double, sepals rimmed in a picotee of  fuschia, a single white with brushstrokes of merlot, green edged in burgundy and butter-yellow splashed with aubergine freckles.  Heartened my footfall sings a refrain of hope.

Edgeworthia chrysantha, Chinese paperbush, is slow to flower this year — buds burgeoning and straining to open — restrained by effects of snow and ice.  Can’t wait for this daphne relative to burst in flower and fragrance.  Must be patient.  Another lesson. Soon.

An unlikely clump of ratty, snow damaged evergreen foliage offers a prize — the lavender-blue blooms of Iris unguicularis (syn. Iris stylosa).  Head bent I drop to my creaky knees on the sidewalk getting close enough to breathe in the delicious scent exuded by this north African treasure dwelling in the gravel garden.  Reward. 

An ornamental cherry tree (big mistake all those years ago) planted in a parkway bed created the most inhospitable environment in the garden — inundated by waves of roots cresting the soil — dry as a bone.  Minor bulbs to the rescue.  Clumps of Cyclamen coum, selected for leaf color and pattern, wave their nodding, magenta flowers above sheets of heart-shaped green and silver leaves.  Cultivars of Iris reticulata in shades of purple and blue stand sentry near clusters of winter aconite, Eranthis hyemalis, breaching the gravel mulch with lobed collars of green topped by blooms ressembling buttercups.  The denizens of my version of garden hell herald a shift in seasons and outlook.  Hope springs eternal in the garden.

Next week is the beginning of the official gardening season with the Northwest Garden Show in Seattle.  Am off to the Emerald City to commune with my garden people.  More about that later.  Going with mixed feelings as this may be the last year for both the Seattle and San Francisco garden shows.