The bluest season in the garden

Tucked into the mailbox yesterday, on a scrap of notebook paper:  Thank you for creating such a beautiful garden! I love walking by - it's one of those small joys that make up a good day.

The note was written in pencil, with no signature, no contact information. Just an anonymous gesture of gratitude that lifted my spirits immeasurably.

The front yard was Sandy's territory. She fussed over it, taking pictures throughout the season so that she could fill in gaps the next year or otherwise think about the layout. I knew passersby loved our garden. In fact, one of the neighbors figured out that something was wrong with Sandy when the yard fell into disarray in the summer of 2011. I told him after she died that I didn't know how I was going to keep it going without her.

Then I realized last summer that the Japanese Maple, the centerpiece of the front yard and the only part of it that had really been my doing, had succombed to verticillium wilt and had to go. I thought I'd have to rethink the entire front yard, and that I'd necessarily erase Sandy's work. I was wrong.

A different time of year, clearly, with the dahlia blooming, and
it was more than a decade ago. But almost as soon as Sandy
started planting the front yard, passersby began to gush over it.

The Japanese Maple is gone now. I miss it. I've bought a ceanothus to go in the space it used to occupy, though, and I'm hopeful it will get enough sun there to be a beautiful source of blue flowers. Meanwhile, I've discovered that Sandy's garden continues to thrive. The hundreds of bulbs she planted sprout and bloom right on time, in wonderful succession, and many have naturalized. The perennials do their thing on cue, and the self-seeders have self-sown with abandon. Like the anonymous note-leaver, I love walking by the front garden. Sometimes, I just stand out on the porch and drink it in, especially right now, during it's bluest season.

The galanthus poked up first, and then the white forsythia bloomed radiantly as the daffodils took up their stations. Soon, crocuses appeared, and muscari bordered the garden and clumped in various spots within it. The Japanese snowbell trees started to leaf out, and the tulips peeked up. Chinodoxa and several other small blue flowers whose names I don't remember filled in the planting strip under one of the trees, and forget-me-nots clutter the area that had been under the Japanese Maple. The wood hyacinths have just come into full bloom, and the camassia are starting. The bluebeard is tentatively developing its new leaves. Really, aside from the red and yellow tulips, it's a blue wonderland out there.

I have made some changes. I removed the dead tree and another odd yellow-green shrub that Sandy planted a few years ago but that never really worked where it was. I also yanked out most of the daylilies that had grown so thick that they never even bloomed anymore - they just sent up greens and then wilted messily. In their spot, I've added blue-flowering corydalis, a delicate plant I've always loved and that Sandy liked too. And I've planted some santolina, a wonderful fresh-smelling shrub that we used to enjoy in the front yard years ago.

I'll keep puttering out there, weeding and replacing things that fail. But the bones of the garden remain as they were when Sandy tended them. It's a huge gift to me, as I didn't think I'd have the energy to completely redo the front yard this year anyway. Such a joy to realize I don't need to. And so wonderful to know that Sandy's efforts are still giving pleasure to others.