Green, green, green

This time of year, our family members living in the Colorado Rockies always tell me, "our aspen trees still don't have leaves yet." This is hard to imagine, with the rampant growth here in the Northwest. I took this picture yesterday afternoon. I've never seen the roses or peonies so tall-- the horse manure and rain is working its magic. We had strong sun over the weekend, rain yesterday, and sun again today. Which translates into a deluge of tasks for the overworked gardener.

My favorite garden writer Henry Mitchell once said, "if an element of play is not present, there is no point in gardening at all." Well, as far as I'm concerned, there isn't much "play" in weeding, although it was nice to finally plop my rear down in the dirt with hot sun on my back, and do some hand-weeding. This is the time of year when I accidentally rip out, chop off, or trample many delicate things coming up. And every year, this is the time when I give up on the dahlias (they froze, they rotted) but finally, here they come again. That is, if I haven't decapitated them with my hand weeder. You would think I'd remember this; it happens every May.

And there are always, always surprises. This is what keeps us going from year to year. I wrote about buying Sea Holly last June, and convinced myself they would all die. But yesterday I noticed a healthy, strong plant that survived a year's worth of digging and weeding-- so John might get one of his favorite flowers this year, after all.

The tall, bearded iris is the movie star of the spring garden. We used to have many varieties, now we just have a few. I got tired of them because they take up space and have to be divided so often, but then decided having none in the June garden was too sad. So I started nursing back a few special clumps, like this one. The flowers don't last long (what great beauty does?) but they give a few days of supreme loveliness and then become ugly plants again for the rest of the year.