One of the best things about gardens is that there’s always something to look forward to.
Of course I was a little sad to see the last camellia flower, but my sadness was tempered by the azalea — which not only survived its move into a pot, but was flowering! — and the dwarf yew, which in May has golden tips of new growth.
A few years ago, we thought it might be nice to designate an area for our hellebores, which until then had been scattered around the garden. Now they’ve filled in that spot, exactly as we had hoped. It’s not a huge or unexpected outcome, but it still feels a bit miraculous. How often does life turn out so perfectly? It’s nice to have an example at your fingertips.
And then there are the ferns. Three years ago, we decided to plant more ferns, which seemed to have a better chance than some of our other plants (RIP) of thriving in a shady garden. For the first few years, we were a bit skeptical. The ferns seemed a little small and constrained, a far cry from the exuberant plants we saw in forests (and in gardening catalogs).
But with experience comes patience, and this year, the ferns have come into their own, another example of a small miracle to hold at our fingertips.
