spring growth

There is such a rush of leafy growth in the garden, I am slightly amazed to think that I unleashed all of it.  We sat drinking mugs of tea in the conservatory at four o'clock, and I reflected that I had planted everything I could see in the garden, apart from the wild cherry by the septic tank.  All the others, the 'Tai Haku', the wavering spire of the not-a-swamp-cypress, the roses, the poisonous mounds of Aconitum, the emerging peony foliage, either came home as a wee thing in my car, or arrived in a box or bag that I'd ordered, or else seeded itself after I'd conjured up its parent.  Over the years it has turned into a vast amount of plant growth that at this time of the year feels like a glorious tidal wave.

There are not a huge number of flowers in the second week of May, though it scarcely matters because the green leaves are so fresh and many hued.  The wild primroses have finished and so has the gean and 'Tai Haku' and the amelanchier, the tulips are going over, the blue flowers of Brunnera are starting to fade.  The huge ping pong ball flowers of Paeonia rockii are tantalisingly still closed. In the further rose bed Camassia leichtlinii and Centraura montana are making a haze of blue.  In the ditch bed the arching stems of Solomons seal and fluffier white flowers of Smilacina racemosa are out, and lily-of-the-valley is creeping about at ankle level.

In the sloping bed the double gean is still in bloom.  It comes usefully later than the wild single form, and being sterile the flowers last longer.  Exochorda x macrantha 'The Bride' is just opening, and the yellow scented azalea is hanging on in there, but the great bulk of flowers have still to come.  At the top of the sloping bed the sombre purple flowers of Geranium phaeum are going their thing.  This is a useful geranium for shady dry corners, though it seeds itself almost too much.

But the main impression is the explosive energy of all that leafy growth.  I looked up at the Metasequoia, and remembered how I picked it out at a now-defunct local conifer nursery under the firm impression that I was buying a swamp cypress.  I looked at the fresh green serrated leaves of the Zelkova, and remembered it as a lanky lopsided seedling in the greenhouse, and I was gently amazed at how stuff grows.