Spring Green in All Its Glory

60: (May 2018)

Is there anything as lovely as the color green in springtime? Especially in New England! After months of being steeped in neutral shades of brown, gray, and white, when spring finally arrives and the green starts to pop out, the color is so gorgeous that my eyes can barely take it all in. The color holds both the promise of newness and the repository of memory as it plays out in my garden.

The emergence of green carries with it the imprint of loved ones and life passages of various sorts. The green stems of special irises that a friend dug up from her garden when she moved from her home of decades, passing the irises to me to continue to cherish. The leafing of the rose bush given to my younger daughter by her school upon graduation from the eighth grade. The dependable bachelor button foliage, flowers given to me when I first moved into this house 24 years ago by a neighbor who divided some from her garden. She recently donated one of her kidneys to an old college friend, so now those bachelor buttons will forever remind me of the incredible generosity capable of human beings.

This year, spring came late, seemingly begrudgingly, which only emphasized its annual burst of intense color saturation. Spring green is a special hue that lasts for a brief but delightful time. The life force that sends it blasting into the world seems to infuse it with sunshine itself. Tinged with yellow, spring green is so exuberant that it’s hard not to feel a little giddy when you’re surrounded by it. It’s earth’s way of saying thank you for sticking around for another season. To see another spring, to experience that color, is indeed a gift.

When our sweet old horse Zizi lived in the backyard barn, every year when spring came around I’d rejoice with her that we’d made it through another winter. That we’d lived to see another spring. Though she was rather old, I had no reason to believe that I wouldn’t make it to another spring, being of good health and still young(ish), but it never hurts to be thankful for each season and each day. Now when I garden, I am conscious that Zizi, (who passed two years ago), is part of the earth and its seasons, part of its life force and mystery; there is comfort in that.

Spring can be challenging for me because it’s hard to go to work in the morning when I just want to be digging in the garden and observing new bits of green emerge. I grow the occasional vegetable, but absolutely adore watching flowers begin their transformation from tentative stems and leaves poking up from the dirt into shapes and colors that are scrumptiously beautiful, sometimes comical, and always a celebration of life.

This spring, it’s been extra fun to tend to flowers, bushes, and ornamental trees that were given to me and my husband as wedding gifts last June. These new additions to the garden made it through their first New Hampshire winter to greet springtime with their own tender displays of greenery. Fitting gifts to remind us of spring’s eternal promise of new life and new love, a testimony to the dependability of the seasons of life. Spring does indeed come.

40: (May 1998)

Portulacas, petunias, and marigolds, growing along the foundation borders of our house. Hyacinths in mauve, blue, and pink, poking through the neighbor’s fence into our yard. I remember touching them, smelling them. I remember the warmth of the sun and the feeling that the whole universe was contained in my backyard. I was five years old, and I knew the earth’s secret; dirt held magic—it brought forth flowers.

I got busy soon enough with bicycle riding, jumping rope, playing at friends’ homes, homework, after-school jobs, college, living in Manhattan (where real dirt is imprisoned under asphalt and concrete), migrating to downtown Boston, having babies, moving to the country, buying a home, and . . . discovering dirt again! Dirt I can grow in. Dirt I can feel with my hands. Dirt these former city hands do not mind mixing with aged manure and compost, even without gloves. I have fallen in love all over again. I have fallen in love with dirt.

Of course, it is the flowers that the dirt nurtures that attract me to it. I am wild about brilliant colors and the miraculous shapes that dance on green stems. It is the dirt that gives them its wondrous, life-giving properties.

My children were jealous of my attentions to the garden at first. But gradually they have become part of it, claiming their own garden beds and selecting their favorite colors and designs. “Garden sandwiches” are a regular offering to their friends; “bread” of sorrel leaves, with fillings of Johnny-jump-ups, nasturtiums, basil, and chives.

This spring, four hyacinths bloomed next to our front door. They were my first hyacinths since childhood. I wanted to hug them. Were they the same flowers as those poking through that backyard fence in Brooklyn?

My children smelled them, touched them. The magic of the earth stirred.

60-40:

My love affair with the garden has deepened with each passing year. It is so much a part of who I am at this point that it’s become an extension of me. Not that I’m a great gardener, by any means. I’m too much of a softy, letting flowers self-seed where they want and generally letting the flowers take the dominant role in our relationship! The garden often looks like a chaotic tangle of color and shapes by the end of the summer, but I love it that way. Too much order in a garden is not my style.

Though my husband doesn’t really enjoy gardening, he doesn’t mind turning the dirt over and hauling things around (insert smiley face!). More importantly, he enjoys the flowers and all the birds, butterflies, and bees that are attracted to them. We stroll the garden every morning with a cup of coffee, sometimes leisurely, sometimes for just a few minutes.

The garden invites me to take the time to reflect, lest life go by unnoticed. And those precious moments fill me with a wellspring of happiness that I can dip into throughout the day — and that may very well last a lifetime.