PEAS

The campus is so beautiful this time of the year.  

Being indoors is difficult when such loveliness is just beyond the front doors.  We've had crazy high temperatures all week - reaching into the upper 80's.  My little peas emerged yesterday - so very exciting!

A trip to the nursery is crucial today to restock my Liquid Fence supply.  We have an enthusiastic bunny population and I don't mind, as long as they remember that the garden is off limits!  The evil stench of the LF really works.  I wonder if they make anything to discourage THIS kind of behavior!!!!

What a wicked beast - more than two acres of potty access and he chooses the rhubarb plant.  Almost every season a little wren makes a tiny nest in the center of that plant.  The large leaves offer protection from the elements and keep the babies safely invisible to predators.  We strolled around in the soft rain this morning to discover that we have BLOOM-AGE!  (seemingly overnight).

European Ginger always says 'spring' for this garden.  I divide and plant it every season, everywhere.  I love the way it holds up in the deepest heat of July.  Here's another harbinger of spring - the primrose that my friend Ida brought to me from her mother's garden.  

We may have to take a trip to Ida's - she gardens in Rhinecliff, overlooking the river.  She and her husband Norman were my neighbors for a few memorable years - they were weekenders then, commuting from Albany.  My kitchen window faced Ida's and on Sunday nights, when the last light was turned off and their car headed north, I would experience an intense loneliness - looking out my window at the silent house next door.   I was a single parent in those years and Ida and Norman were benevolent tenderhearted substitutes for family.  Because of them, and a few others, we truly knew what community meant and we felt that we belonged to something very special.  We did.