IN THE COOL OF THE EVENING

Hundreds of fireflies float in the pale blue shadow of chestnut tree. A quarter moon lights  the sky--a Chinese lantern dangling from blue velvet. Pale green green rose petals fall silently on a gravel path. The sugary smell of honeysuckle suffuses the evening air. The dew is on grass, the owls are in their nests. The creek sings on its way to meet  the river. In the garden, passion flower vines twine around an old wheelbarrow, a stray gooseberry bush sinks its roots in a whiskey barrel. Basil leaves, punctured here and there by persistent insects, glow green in the twilight.
Life is basic in the cottage garden. The cat kills a baby garter snake. The crows mob baby owls. All the poetry of lily buds exploding into starry flowers cannot obscure the violence that takes place amid the cycle of death and renewal that is the very essence of gardening. I plant arugula, beets,  calendula, cleome, cucumbers, dill and  gourds knowing that the deer will devour most of the seedlings.  Yo garden is to hope that something of use will endure.

There are two kinds of Oriental poppies in my garden. One earlier variety resembles a   flamenco dancer's skirts with row upon row of ruffled petals; the later is plain enough to please a minimalist. Both are a vibrant orange with dark accents meant, I suppose, to attract bees and other pollinators. I have tried Icelandic and California poppies more than once without little success. The older Oriental varieties do better in my insect infested garden. They bloom briefly, they take up lots of room and they have no scent. all this should make them unwelcome in my flower beds, but such as their extraordinary beauty in their brief season that i plan to add other colors this fall--pink to go with the fairy roses, white next to Sombreuil, red under  the Dublin bay climber.
This has been too busy of time to tend flower beds. I was rather late sowing annuals and transplanting tomatoes and basil. I still hope to get around to fencing the veggie garden. If so, I will seed dill, zucchini and a late crop of snow peas. For now, I need to seed a second crop of basil in the only place the deer avoid--right next to my front door.
While I plot and plan I will be sampling Jane Green's Hot Chocolate Banana Cake. Her novel, Promises to Keep has a number of tempting recipes. I made her version  of the Neiman Marcus chocolate chip cookies to share with the neighbors. My guy liked them so much I probably will bake a double batch very soon. Green's banana cake is a chocolate lover's dream--so rich it dispenses with frosting. I could  post the recipe here but I would rather encourage readers to buy Green's book.

Solange peony and Alchymist rosebuds

ROSES AND A GLASS OF BLANC LIME

The day is cool and misty. In the garden, Noisette roses, peonies and Canadian  are full bloom. The much maligned multiflora rose bushes exude a warm scent of cinnamon that more than makes up for its aggressive tendencies. The wood thrush unwinds a silvery chain of song in the green woods. The man in my life brings me  a glass of blanc lime and we talk about France, books, family ties.  I want to linger in this moment, but I have to review a bestseller in which suburban  characters totally adore each other as they sit  on squishy sofas wearing strappy sandals. This is, apparently the nec plus ultra of summer reads.  Balzac it isn't. Sigh.

MY GARDEN IN MAY --II

MY GARDEN IN MAY

There is much more to come. The garden enters into its glory in May, but I am snowed under with books to review, interviews to prepare. Patience, mes enfants. Read my book blog entries about Scott Turow'a newest book and his talk with NPR's Scott Simon at the Smithsonian at www.richtext.blogspot.com or www.bibliolust.wordpress.com

MORE APRIL BLOSSOMS

Vinca aka periwinkle.

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Italian salad seedlings.

Bee on redbud blossom.

Redbud in bud.

Volunteer redbud.

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Nanking cherry blossoms.

                                                               Dutchman's breeches.

APRIL BLOSSOMS

Ornamental quince Toyo Nishiki.

Thalia daffodil.

Heleborus niger

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Epidemium.

                                                  White anemones and Confederate violets.

THE RIGHTS AND WRONGS OF SPRING

Above--Cilantro seedlings.

Below--A bee checks out our first crocuses. 

There is snow on the mountains, but  in the valley,  pansies, snowdrops are bustin' out all over. On our street, in Little Macondo,  pale joggers jiggle their winter fat and  exercise deprived yummy mommies push over-sized strollers as grimly as if they were rolling  Sisyphean boulders uphill. On main street, students on spring break crouch on the icy retaining walls of university buildings, freezing their buns while they  scan the traffic and scope the babes. Oblivious of flocks of geese flying overhead, tourists  eye restaurant menus, debating the merits of  pad Thai, organic steaks and  pizza. The Oriental carpet merchants whack their wares with carpet beaters, our surly meter maid abandons the comfort of the town's gas-guzzling SUV to stick the tourists with 25 dollar dollar parking tickets Somewhere in the hood,  a bad trumpet player mangles the hell out of  "My Funny Valentine."

 Bought tulips, lilies,  and Margaret's paperwhites.

Mr. Fibonacci succulent shows off its pattern. 

Greece is going the the tubes,  another earthquake shakes up Chile, a politician admits that  he groped male staffers, the media construct from Alaska shops  for the  reality show that will lend her a presidential air--in a pig's eye-- but we care nothing about this stuff. In Little Macondo, we tend our little gardens. After all, Saint Pat's around the corner and that is our deadline for planting peas and potatoes. We buy our snow peas at the Southern states co-op, but if we want  fingerling potatoes we have to order them from places like John Scheepers and Jahnny Selected Seeds. Scheepers has Red Ruby, Bintje, All Blue, Princess LaRatte and Yellow Finn seed taters at  $11.95 plus shipping for ten tubers. I am partial to Yukon Gold, which will probably be available at the general store in the next county. That is where I will get a couple of bales of hay  so that I can repeat my experiment with the tubular veggie beds I bought the year before last. I can only hope that I get better results than I did last year when Bambi and family devoured nearly everything I planted. This season, my paramour and I plan to  fence in the veggie garden, but word from local  gardeners is that the  fence that will keep Bambi  out has yet to be invented. We'll see. For now, we concentrate on indoor plants--succulents, forced paperwhite narcissi and a  pot of cilantro seedlings that soak up the sun on a windowsill. 

PARADISES LOST, PARADISES FOUND

Fantin Latour's Hydrangeas

Playwright John Guare told me not to " a lumpen, my dear" when I asked him a question he did not like. Joyce Carol Oates was graciousness personified when she I interviewed her for a provincial newspaper. Two writers, two different stytles, two different approaches. I remember Guare's cowboy boots more clearly than I remember the lecture he delivered at the local university, but i cannot forget the comment he addressed to one of the students in the audience whose mind he compared to worn out jockey shorts elastic. During one of her lecture, Oates contended courteously with the high pitched wailing of a baby whose parents thought he was old enough to begin his career as a culture vulture.

I realize that none of this has to do with gardening, cookery or art. It has to do with my new blog, www.richtexts.blogspot.com in which I will discuss writers and writing. I wait with baited breath to conclude an interview with Chandler Burr, whose title of perfume critic of the New York Times does him no justice. He is much more than that. See my new blog for details.

Meantime, the garden enters its slow phase. There is a second, more modest floraison of the heirloom roses. The rugosa Sir Thomas Lipton seems to have synchronized its blooming with the waxing moon. Pale daylilies, remnants of two subsequent plantings of White Flower Farm mixes and Klehm's Song Sparrow farm specialties keep pace with lavender and china blue delphiniums. Bluestocking monarda thrusts its coarse blossoms among Seafoam roses. Casablanca lilies are in bud. Hydrangeas and nasturtiums compete in number of blooms.

In the vegetable garden all but half a dozen strawberry plants defy the voracious deer as do a few tomatoes, snow peas, okra--planted for the unsurpassed elegance of its flowers--summer squah and pumpkins. A terrifyingly repulsive worm has attacked the radishes and no doubt it will also devour the purple Dragon carrots. Season after growing season in the garden, plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.

Thinking of ruined gardens, I pull Daphne du Marier's Rebecca out of my bookshelf. It rereads marvelously well. I read recently, probably in Burr's You or Someone Like You that "All paradises are paradises lost." Max de Winter and the de Winter villainess in The Three Musqueteers' each lost paradise due to the serpentine convolutions of adultery. In real gardens and in gardens of words, the more it changes, the more it remains the same.

GROSS GREEN GREED

Path at Georges Sand's garden, Nohant.

The dream--Georges Sand's garden at Nohant, painted by Delacroix.

The reality--a modest path bordered by sweet rocket and a a volunteer redbud.

A Worth creation

In my next life I will embrace minimalism. I will wear starkly tailored black clothes and live in a Richard Neutrahhouse decorated with no more than a couple of Noguchi pieces. I will become a vegan and drink nothing but Pernod. I will read Derrida and listen to Phillip Glass. I will make a Japanese garden with only three plants. If you believe that, I have a bridge I would like to sell you.

These are the facts--I believe that if you don't have some excess in your life, you are on your way to becoming one of those one-dimensional stick people little kids draw. If I could choose two clothes designers, I would choose Vionnet and Worth. I like plush, lush, sumptuous stuff. I like silk velvet, satin, soft Kashmiri shawls, handmade Valenciennes lace. I like colors--cinnabar, eau de nil, heliotrope, indigo, lapis lazuli, rose madder, saffron yellow. Minimalism, deconstructionism, pretty much any kind of ism just isn't my thing. There is no danger that I will become the owner of a Japanese garden. I don't have the temperament for Zen. Mine is a very Victorian sensibility. I like Queen Anne houses and Cotswold cottages. I love Grand Marnier and I detest Pernod. Though I mean to reform any day soon, I am, at present, an unreconstructed meat eater. I love Eastlake chairs and camel back sofas, reproductions of Paul Duprees sugary botanical paintings, blue and white Sttafordshire, flowery Limoges, embroidered linens and frilly furbelows. I could almost say, as Flaubert did, that "Madame Bovary, c'est moi." Minus Charles, Rodolphe, Leon and suicide, bien sur.

I do not have the temperament for Zen. I adore Dickens in all his overblown verbosity, I love Tchaikovy's folksy musical gingerbread and I would not trade Beethoven's Appassionata for a million Glass concerti.

Now, don't go thinking that I go around swathed in silks and velvets. I should be so lucky. I wear denim all too often. I live in a log house and my love of Victorian trappings is kept severely in check by budgetary constraints. But for better or for worse, plants are my downfall. I burn with a lust that has no bounds for roses and roses and roses and peonies and irises and ferns and poppies. I lust for pawpaw and yuzu and meddlars, bananas and fig trees. Then I lust some more. As we speak, I wait with great impatience for the arrival of approximately two dozens roses, twenty peonies, a dozen ferns, a white ornamental quince, a clump of Hakonechloa, half a dozen German irises and three Fialla lilacs. As I wait, I work on a wish list that grows dangerously long--the old roses roses Ghislaine de Feligonde, Guirlande d'Amour, Queen of the Bourbons, Ispahan, Kazanlik, Omar Khayyam, Deuil de Paul Fontaine, Charles de Mills, Rose de Reshts, Perles des Panachees, Tour de Malakoff, Robin Hood, and the newer Livin' Easy. Finding room for this many plants could be a problem unless I tear up the lawn. I have some space I am honor bound to leave untouched. The turtles and birds that live in my neighborhood need it more than I do. The lawn is another story. I am very tempted to do away with it. However, it is no good to imagine that it can be replaced by roses and perennials. I would have to go with native plan, deer resistant plants that require no watering. Bother. In my next life I to be George Sand. Better yet, I want to be Queen Victoria.

PHOTOS

Freecycle peony is the gift of a family facing foreclosure. Claire Jacquier climber draped over a support built last year.

ALMOST HEAVEN

It doesn't het much better than this.

FLOWER SNAPS