Hot Green World

Spring, after wandering around aimlessly and hiding behind winter for some weeks, just landed on the garden like a ton of bricks.

We had two eighty-degree days and then it rained all night. I woke up this morning, looked out the window, and the world was GREEN.

Not just any green, of course. That hot, new-leaf green, the kind that makes you wonder why green is ever considered a cool color, a blazing green of unutterable greenness. They do not make greens like this at any other time.

The hickories are the greenest offenders, but the maples and sweetgums are working hard to catch up.

Everything in the garden just exploded. It may not have been overnight, but it was close. Plants that were a small basal rosette for weeks are suddenly a foot tall with flower spikes. The foamflower went from “dormancy” to “LOOK AT ME I HAVE FLOWERS LOOK AT MY FLOWERS I AM AWESOME” at a dead run. I spend over an hour a day roaming around the yard, and I STILL find new plants out of the blue that I didn’t see the day before. (Logic says that I must have overlooked them, but they’re also going at the speed of a galloping racehorse.)

You drive down the road and the trees are every shade from chartreuse to dark pine. My cherry tree has lost all its flowers and is now covered in green. The native plum is doing the same. Plants that I never expected to survive are throwing flowers. (Columbine! I have a columbine! I have NEVER successfully overwintered a columbine, and every time somebody said “But they’re practically weeds!” it was a dagger in my gardening heart. And there it is!)

Also, Operation Jewelweed appears to have been a smashing success. And by smashing, I mean “the way Godzilla smashes Tokyo.” Hmm.

There are over twenty frogs in the pond. I think the salamander eggs either hatched or were eaten or have been covered by algae or something. The cricket frogs fling themselves out from underfoot with every step.

Tomorrow I’ll have to plant out cucumbers and melons, because I don’t think we’re getting much of a spring this year. I suspect we will be propelled directly into summer without stopping. Some of the beans are up. I planted out pitcher plant seeds, which were promptly drowned by the rain, so…maybe not. But we’ll see.

It is glorious out. I can hardly stand to stay inside, and if I didn’t have books to write, I don’t know if I would.

Originally published at Squash's Garden. You can comment here or there.