True Dirt

Flora regina

The more I despair of civilization, the more I wonder at nature. I'm sure it's what every gardener concludes after awhile, particularly in spring when whatever it was that we mulled over in the twiddling days of winter - the inadequacies and faults and difficulties of our garden - are waved away by nature's magic wand. I walk out the back door one morning and am stupified once more by the artless beauty of the plant world. Flora returns to her domain and all her green mignons have dressed for the ball.

The wisteria, its lavender spectacle all but forgotten, has bowed to the roses, out in fat flounces of perfumed silk barely seconds after the leafing. The clematis have twirled out their purple pinwheels and the poppies have popped off their dunce caps and called the bees out with blinding orange banners. These may be the stage hoggers, but in every terra cotta pot and down among the dying bulbs something is pushing through to remind me again why it's there - vermillion salvia and cherry red abutilon, the mahogony stems of the Mexican dahlias, and the blue sparkle of a massive borage that is fast obscuring the compost bin. The birds are everywhere beeping and chirping and whistling and the flash yellow-and-black of a swallowtail is coloring up the air around a stack of purple and white chinese houses. The lavender has gone from a dry grey stick to a vibrant green featherball while I blinked, and there are suddenly strawberries peeking out from a shiney green vine. Even the weeds look good. But spring is not really here until his majesty the scarlet oak shivers off the last stiff autumn leaf and breathes out a mantle of chartreuse lace. There. We begin again.