Just starting.
Fading.
Faded.
Just starting.
garden
spring vs summer
Without question—Spring—best time of year in the garden. Better than summer when everything’s clamouring and shouting, a riot of colour, a blur, mere background— like a gallery full of exquisite art—impressive as a collection, but impossible to give each item the attention it deserves.
Right now the garden is quiet, still stretching, yawning, relaxed. A humble place where the most excitement is every day another bit of green has replaced mud, a bloom has opened pink or blue or white, and that clump of leaves—still undistinguishable—is either cardinal flower or coreopsis. Does it really matter?
It’s excitement enough.
Oh sure, god bless summer and all that, but by July there’s so much to see I think we actually see less—whereas right now, and for a while longer, it’s possible to see everything…
Last night’s rain on this morning’s lupin and lady’s mantle.
garlic report: april
springly sightings
moon over magnolia
hydrangea, pasque flower, grape hyacinth, and some mystery whites, all getting along famously
where the snow shovel used to live
the first pick
things to do with weeds
Chop nettles. Don’t worry, they don’t bite. Much.
Rinse radish seedlings (these are the ‘thinnings’ you pull out so the others have leg room to grow into plump little morsels).
Add chopped garlic, cucumber and broccoli stems (peeled), shredded carrot, dandelion blossoms and violets. Toss with lemon juice and olive oil. Sprinkle with sea salt. Take outside and eat in the sun. Smile. Weeds are good.
the first
“Each evening, before the dive boat returns, I sit on the deck of the cantina, watch the sun fall into the ocean. Sometimes I see Pearl and her daughter, flashes of silver in the distance, and I raise my glass to them. They’re bottlenose, I learn from my fish book, related to the killer whale; their main enemy is the shark, the left-facing variety of course. I leaf through pictures of basket starfish, eagle rays, familiarize myself with the habits of the curious giant stinking vase sponge and memorize dive terms so that at dinner with the gang I don’t end up saying, “Narcosis, I’m all for that, why I plant at least two dozen each fall…” (From Bliss, by ‘me’, Room—31.1)
Matilda Magtree 
