Could Spring Please Slow Down a Bit?? The Parade is Passing Me By Too Quickly

It's certainly cold enough (nights in the 40's, daytime nudging up toward 55 degrees!) so why is spring parading past so quickly? We gardeners look forward all year to the spring's burgeoning, starting with hellebores, then crocus, narcissus, forsythia, and fritillaria, the earliest viburnum....well, we all have our own touchstone plants that signal the unfurling of new life, the unfolding of a fresh season. Spring is nature's new year, and I want the parade of bloom to linger a bit, not be so quick to come and go.

From the slow uncurling of precious fern fronds and the airy little flowers waving bravely above epimedium leaves, to the main show of tulips and azaleas, it all seems to be happening at once this year. The flowers on my Korean spice viburnum have already faded away...I need to wait an entire year to smell them again??!!

The falling of cherry blossoms is made nearly bearable by the untwirling of hosta leaves as they seem to grow inches a day....and wisteria buds coloring up before they add their indescribably satisfying perfume to the spring parade passing so quickly by.

All we can do is to savor it all deeply...by picking bouquets, fresh herbs and the first lettuces...and baking the first rhubarb pie of the season.

Here are a few spring scenes from Langley, sure to be different by next week...

The entire little park at Anthes and 2nd Street is sweetly scented by crabapples in bloom, scattering their petals on the walkway beneath, so if you catch them this week, you'll have silky, fragrant petals overhead and underfoot.

Can't you just smell this Exbury azalea in one of the parking bays along 2nd Street? I love these old fashioned, deciduous azaleas for their delicate beauty, vivid color and unsurpassed fragrance..

And the lipstick-colored masses of tulips in Langley Village, with wisteria about to pop overhead...

My big comfort in all this is that Langley (our realtor famously commented that Langley would be Sausalito if it didn't face north) is at least a week behind Seattle, where the magnolia blossoms on our street trees are fallen and brown, and lilacs are in full bloom. Every week when I arrive in Langley I get to step back a week or so and enjoy spring just a little longer. Is this clinging the sign of advancing age? By early summer I'll be reconciled to the rhythm of the year...I hope...

Comments

[Chris]

Sooo pretty!! Yes, I wish spring...now that it's finally here..would slow down a wee bit too!! We wait so long for it and then BAM!! :)
Those tulips are amazing!! I made a spring bouquet today and included fern fronds with just their tips unfurling, like the ones in your first photo!
So springy...I bet asparagus would look really cool in a spring bouquet!! :)

[Jennifer Griffithe]

There was a column about Eye Poppers, the blue Himalayan Poppies, and that they are difficult to grow. They are rather, the third easiest to grow, of all flowers.

If one has fresh seed, one can get these beauties going in January. Two of my neighbors and I grow them, and have done the past five years. Actually, they are now opening up.