This is my most favorite time in the garden, just past mid-May (depending on weather and temperatures) when it's all starting to happen. You know flowering is well on its way, but you still have it to look forward to.
Buds are showing color, plumping up, beginning to split open.... Flowers bloom such a short time, that their peak is almost painful because as it's happening you're acutely aware that it's nearly over. But before a downy poppy bud opens, when even a chive is curled up tight, let alone three foot tall alliums (which open tantalizing, satisfyingly slowly, over several weeks) are still in bud, you have the full flowering of springtime ahead of you...
My garden is so small that it only has two real flushes of bloom - allium in late May/early June, followed by fragrant Oriental and Orienpet lilies in late July into August. Let the drama begin, but let it take its own sweet time unfolding, please...
Fuzzy poppy buds look more fauna than flora, like blind little creatures reaching for the light.
A chive hedge along one edge of a raised bed, about to open its pungent little flowers...
Allium's strappy leaves have been a presence since early April, but just in the last couple of weeks the tall stems have made their appearance. These are 'Purple Sensation' and 'Globemaster'; I planted two kinds to extend the bloom time, although their flowering does overlap for two showy weeks...The gold and orange shrub is Spirea 'Magic Carpet', its fresh foliage as brilliantly colored as it ever gets...
Love those blooms-to-be! I couldn't agree more...there is something truly bittersweet about that big floral crescendo...because you know it can't last forever.
Posted by: Scott Weber | May 21, 2012 at 07:38 AM