anticipation

For gardeners, part of the joy of the garden is the anticipation. Are the plans you made going to come to fruition? Are the plants you labored to choose, spent time to source, spent hard earned money to purchase, labored to prepare the ground, worked on irrigation, and months or years to grow, going to grow and perform as you had envisioned? That sweet anticipation of each plant is a great joy.  The pinnacle of anticipation each season may be the emergence of the flower, some days or just before the flower opens. I tried to share this with some friends, and was met with a tepid response. I almost feel sad for those people who only see the end product, the full bloom, a "finished" landscape, while ignoring the process and the full process of development from the beginning of the season to the end, and even the dormant season. Perhaps it is a metaphor for life to appreciate each moment of the process.

Just the emergence of the flower stems appearing from the base foliage is cause for excitement. 

Iris 'Belize'

 The first buds of the roses fills me with great anticipation. In this case, one of my favorite roses, 'Abraham Darby' whose buds appear yellow, and open apricot and fade to pink. The anticipation of that fruity fragrance has me sniffing the buds as soon as color shows in the petals. In this case, the fragrance is already there.

'Abraham Darby'

I planted this tiny cherry tree last year. This year I got to eagerly looked forward to what would happen. Would there be flowers? Even cherries? The tree is still quite a baby, about 3 feet tall, but there were flowers and even the beginning of a cherry. Will there be fruit to taste this year?

'Montmorency' Cherry.

Scabiosa caucasica 'Fama' has been green all winter. One of the plants even had a flower bud  that lasted through snows and winter cold, waiting for warmer weather to bloom. I was waiting, too.

Scabiosa caucasica 'Fama'

I moved this Erigeron to a pot last year since even though it was described as drought tolerant, it really struggled in the dry slope where it was planted. In a pot, it took off and bloomed exuberantly with long lasting spring blooms. From a small plant, it filled the 18" wide pot. I was tempted to transplant it to the garden again, but I decided to let it have another bloom in the pot and I'll move it in the fall. Will it be as glorious this year?

Erigeron speciosus 'Darkest of All'

One of my new tall bearded irises is about to bloom. Will it look like the catalog photo?

'Marie Pavie' rose was damaged by the late freeze we had this year. Last year it was incredible. Will it be able to pull through?

Another of the new irises. Almost there!

 

A new rose is always a great anticipation. I spend many hours choosing a rose bush, partly for the joy of it, and partly because roses can vary to great degrees depending upon the climate, and I want to choose a variety that will do well in my climate. Then there is the expense. Roses are not cheap plants. For good quality plants they can be thirty to fifty dollars plus shipping for a small plant. If ordered from a rose specialty nursery, there is the wait for the right time to ship, the anticipation of arrival (will it come in good condition?), the rush to get them planted, and the seemingly interminable wait for it to grow. This rose arrived with the canes looking shriveled. I soaked it in water for a a day, carefully covering the canes with plastic and misting them to try to rehydrate them. To my relief, they plumped up and I planted it in this pot to trial the plant for a season before committing it to the ground. It's been a month since then, without any growth, even though the roses in the garden were well leafed out even when this one arrived. In the last couple of days, the leaf buds have expanded. Soon there will be leaves, and hopefully, blooms. For the new peonies, the anticipation is even longer, since the first year after planting in the fall, it is normal for there to be no flowers at all, and only the second year after planting might there be a few flowers. Ah, sweet anticipation.