Irises in spring
I know it’s spring by the bursts of purple outside my window. The irises are here. My neighbor has the same kind of irises, though my envious eye notes that hers are way more than mine and much juicier. I must ask her what she’s feeding them. We both got them from our neighbor across the street, a master gardener, who shows up every spring on my front porch with bunches of soil in her hands, holding lamb’s ears, lilies, hostas – muddy bulbs and gently uprooted plants with roots exposed that need soil and water and a green thumb. Plant them now or they’ll dry up, she says, giving me instructions and leaving me feeling responsible for the life that she has entrusted into my hesitant hands.
The white azaleas are starting to bloom, always just in time for Easter. Before that came the peach tree blossoms, before that the daffodils. Those bright splashes of yellow across the cold February winterscape always make me happy. Our resilient fig tree, having gone through two resurrections after freezing winter spells, is already growing small green buds. That winter in 2022 the temperatures dropped to a chilling 7° F (-14° C). Even the hardy rosemary bush shriveled up into a brown brittle mess. I’ve planted another one in its place. The bird of paradise that winters indoors releases one startling orange and blue flower around October or November, so we’ll have to wait a while for that one.
Warm sunshine, cool breezes, gusts of pollen flying in the wind, sticking to your hair, eyelashes, toes, car, kitchen counter tops. And there is mama bird, a Carolina wren, returning to nest in our yard like she does every spring. This time she has made a perfectly round entry into the roof. I wish I could tell her she needn’t go through the trouble. Our cat died last summer, so she would be quite safe nesting in her favorite potted plant on the table in the backyard.
This is the best time (if you can stand the pollen) to be outdoors around here, before the oppressive summer heat, before the mosquitoes and humidity.
Now where are those walking shoes? Time to spring out.
From poet Ross Gay’s Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude:
…
thank you zinnia, and gooseberry, rudbeckia
and pawpaw, Ashemead’s kernel, cockscomb
and scarlet runner, feverfew and lemon balm;
thank you knitbone and sweetgrass and sunchoke
and false indigo whose petals stammered apart
by bumblebees good lord please give me a minute…
and moonglow and catkin and crookneck
and painted tongue and seedpod and johnny jump-up;
thank you what in us rackets glad
what gladrackets us;
…