It’s a ritual for me as the weather warms up to wander around the yard peering hopefully at my perennials, looking for the first buds. Did they make it through the winter? I still have one plant I’m monitoring, telling myself that I can see some buds forming, but it’s probably self-delusion.
I hope to chronicle some gardening triumphs this year, but the four o’clocks probably aren’t going to be one of them. The post about their sprouting turned out to be premature. Although the plant tray was tucked back in a corner of the plant table down in the cats’ room they managed to find it and pull up all those hopeful little sprouts. So I had to order some more seed, and even though these were brand-new stock, straight from the seed company, they’ve done very poorly. Only six of them have come up, and only one of them is showing any real growth. Those beautiful flowering bushes that have filled the beds around the deck in the past are probably going to be no-shows this year, but I still have some hopes. In fact, as soon as I finish this post I’m going out to water the seeds I just planted in the beds themselves, since the ones under the grow lights (now moved to the shed, away from marauding cats) are such a bust.
I have such great plans for filling up the various empty places in the yard, and I can’t even get four o’clock seeds to sprout! But no matter. We have rosebushes, and hollies, and a hibiscus to plant this weekend. (The cats have also destroyed my previous hibiscus plants; I will have to sequester the new one in the laundry room during the winter when we bring it in before the first frost. Jim is, as you may have guessed, thrilled.) What a source of happiness it is to see things take hold and grow! The disappointments only make the successes all the sweeter. (But I won’t complain if we have a minimum failure rate.)
What are the hopeful signs of spring that you look for every year?