While I waited for the first spring flowers to bloom in Moscow, I tried to tamp down my envy at seeing west side friends’ Facebook photos of cherry trees already blossoming in Seattle and Portland. As soon as the snow melted here, I zipped up my fleece jacket and set out for a walk through the Fort Russell neighborhood, looking for buttercups. I found them a few blocks away, growing in clusters in a small rock garden. In the language of flowers, buttercups symbolize childlike joy, and I remembered being a little girl in Aberdeen, Wash., taking turns with my friends as we held a buttercup under each other’s chins. When we saw the flower’s yellow reflection, we chanted, “You like butter!”
During my walk I also found star-shaped blue scilla, lavender, purple and yellow crocuses, and white snowdrops, all of them bright patches of color among the dried leaves that covered many gardens, including my own. My first impressions seemed to pass in a blur, because my walking partner zipped us past the flower beds on his way to his own scenic landmarks: utility poles and tree trunks. It’s a good thing, actually, that Duffy, our bouncy, black and brown Bernedoodle puppy, has little interest in flowers. Eating them can be toxic for dogs. Later, I retraced the blooming route by myself at a more leisurely pace. The daffodils looked ready to flower, but most of the tulips, including the ones in my garden, still lay, half-dreaming, in their beds, as did the late-blooming Lenten roses (hellebores) that grow in a shady spot under our kitchen window.
The next day Duffy chased his tail and launched some excellent nut-outs in our backyard while I checked on the emerging perennials in a nearby raised bed. Tiny purple violets had fluffed out and multiplied since I wrote about them a few weeks ago. and leafy rosettes of Southern Charm verbascum promised another summer of delicate dusty rose, ivory and pastel yellow flowers, clustered on tall stems. A few delphiniums and Champagne Bubbles Iceland poppies had survived the winter and will add blue, white, pink and orange accents to the bed.
Lee and I don’t let Duffy to go anywhere beyond our backyard unless he’s leashed, so last Saturday, for the first time this season, I was able to spend an hour alone in the front garden, sprinkling seeds for growing fancy poppies at the edge of a tulip bed. I was careful to disturb as little of the matted-leaf ground cover as possible, to help preserve the winter home of bees and other pollinators. At first I had to blink hard and wrest my mind away from memories of Benjamin BadKitten, the Maine coon cat I loved so much. Over the 16 years of his life, I’d become accustomed to interruptions whenever I knelt in the dirt. Benjamin would pad over and settle himself in my lap, purring, while I struggled to reach around him to finish weeding a bed or planting a flat of pansies. Every time, through all those seasons, I ended up laying down my trowel and petting my chief garden staffer. And every year, when I finally did get the flowers planted, BBK reenacted his springtime ritual: he peed on the pansies. Last weekend, in my Church of Dirt and Flowers, I realized that I was smiling as I thought about my BadKitten. On my knees in that blessed place, I found a sense of peace as comforting as a warm shawl.
I know Duffy would be eager to offer his help in my garden but, believe me, there’s a difference between letting a 15-pound cat mince across a pansy patch and allowing a 45-pound puppy with oversize paws to galumph his way through a flower bed. Even if I could find a way to keep Duffy enclosed in our front yard, I’d pass. Our adorable Bernedoodle isn’t built for tiptoeing through the tulips. He’d just be a slapstick comedy waiting to happen. So while I’m weeding and planting flowers in the front garden this summer, Duffy will be in the backyard with Lee, doing his own freelance landscape excavation as soon as Lee turns away to stir the compost.
Craft Rozen looks forward to shedding her fleece jacket and gardening in warmer weather. Email her at scraftroze@aol.com
