Winter is staying here. It may have traveled to Lake Forest from the west; no, I think it slipped over the border from the north, and maybe slightly west, over the corner of Minnesota. May is its very latest deadline, I would think, but it’s not going.
Blackie is the most careful evaluator. She scoots around the edge of my half open bedroom door and sniffs up. Her fangs show when her head is tilted and her read end is flattened against the deck because she has only one leg back there. Her head bobs up and down. I read that cats see in a different manner from us. They need to align shapes, so they bob and twist their heads to get their eyes in the right position. Her nose tells her the temperature while she is viewing the sky and checking the light. I know she will stay close if the temperature is cool. This morning it is chilly.
Daisy wanted to be released to the big yard, so I let her charge out the back door. Antonio is working out back, putting in dozens of flowers. I have discovered New York Asters. They have small starry blooms (aster means “star”) on flayed out bushy stems in the fall. I’ll pull in many more mums in late summer. They will keep the blooms past July. The trick is to keep the flowers coming without annuals. Annuals strike me as too little bang for the buck. Pansies and petunias are paltry. I don’t like to denigrate flowers, but those two disappoint me. Probably because they are displayed incorrectly in gardens. Americans think “variety” is important. They don’t understand massing. Italians do. The French, too. And English gardens use large clumps of roses and hydrangeas for dramatic effect. Scale. Americans don’t see it. They plant tiny flowers in massive containers. Too low, too pale. If I planted pansies, I’d place one color (or one multi-colored version) in low beds in a serpentine shape, like a fat snake. But annuals have to be replaced yearly. No, thanks.
So my perennial plantings carry me through to snow time. (We had some a few weeks ago!). No letup. But this late-arriving summer and spring give me more time to plant. Leaves are slow arriving too, so my new forsythia (fifteen bushes) get more sun for blooming. The daffodils are just beginning to fade—an extra long display. While they sit, I can see spaces to fill. And I’ll have Antonio divide them. Neighbors don’t bother. So scattered clumps awkwardly bestrew nearby yards. My blooms are spread like a quilt, and wider each year. They multiply, but you have to help out by separating. The result is uplifting. There is a cozy feeling from the coverlets and a harmony between the trees and shrubs wrapped by the splotches of color. I have no plan, so my paintings are impressionistic. Sometimes they’re awkward, sometimes graceful, often surprising. You keep altering. Move it here, shove it over there, put those two together, separate those. No, leave it. What the hell, dig it up again!
My stone path is garrulous. It declares itself, then whispers, crunches and scrunches you to the new pool patio fountain and the yard. My own peculiar shape and statement. The out buildings are a vivid gloss green. All the pickets are gone (some lining the back property line) and mature flat-bottomed round-topped gray and taupe stones surround two flower gardens. Just sitting atop one another. As natural as unnatural placement can be. But no mortar. Only gravity, wind, rain and critters to set them askew from time to time; to honor nature. Sometimes I squat on them, low to the ground, and think I’m a New England farmer. They are a barrier, but a necklace, and so low as to invite a stepover. The flowers feel safe but included in the party.
New copper bird feeders are large and canopied, like coolie hats. Big scale, which I prefer. Large capacity and shelter from the rain: feasting troughs. One fountain trickles water down a ragged slate face, lit from above, into a copper basin; another looks like a rough black rock on a tall square plinth. Water bubbles up from the center of the ball and creeps down the curves. It’s really fiber glass. Both gurgle soothingly.
Blackie sniffed the air and scooted back inside. Daisy is back on my bed. I’m off to the nursery again.
Thinking of you with Love,
Daniel J.