Lily! 9! I can hardly wait for 10:16 AM This. Very. Morning. Because (drumroll, please!) that’s when spring arrives in Walla Walla!
You are so weird about the exact minute.
You’re right about that, 9. Later in life, when we’re 21 or so, we become enmeshed with numbers. The long denial of our algebra aptitude finally takes wing at the University of Washington and is parlayed into a BA in business administration with a concentration in accounting.
This sounds quite dull compared to the theater.
I won’t disagree with that, Lily. But, like many disciplines, accounting has its own rabbit holes of application and inquiry that I have found, if not exactly exciting, absorbing. For instance, I get a kick out of collecting and analyzing data. Even when I’m writing books. My favorite way to identify revisions in a first draft is to enter scene, character and plot thread information to an Excel spreadsheet and sort it for- –
Stop! You’re giving me an Excedrin ™ headache!*
Such great commercials in the 1960s! There are several clips of these online, courtesy of YouTube- -But I digress.
Such a surprise.
Thank you for the snark to keep me focused, Lily. Now what was I. . .Oh, yes, Spring!
It’s my favorite season, I guess because I love seeing renewal unfold all around me. And even though I’ve barely started on this year’s garden cleanup in preparation for growing lots of lovely veggies, there’s already an abundance of new growth replacing the old. Like this:
Spring arrives in the form of colorful, fragrant hyacinths and many other flowering bulbs. . .
Those are the ones that make me sneeze.
A universal reaction for our blogging trio, Lily. Flowering bulbs are Spring’s most persistent visitors: hyacinths, daffodils, and pretty soon tulips. Plus all the winter iris that are already fading.
There are many weeds to pull, of course. Among quite a collection of these I discovered a few volunteer Shasta daisies. This really surprised me, since I planted a row of them last year and none of them came up!
Spring arrives with (I’m pretty sure) a rogue Shasta daisy. . .
What do their flowers look like?
White with yellow centers. They were part of my cutting garden attempt last year. The zinnias, bachelor buttons and special single-bloom sunflowers came up. I was aiming for some summer bouquets in blue, yellow and white. The blue and yellow were pretty, anyway. . .
The honeysuckle is slowly making its comeback. It gets cut down to the ground every fall. Soon it will send a riot of leafy green vines up the trellis and hopefully favor us with lots of orange and hot pink blossoms. So far these have been sparse. It can take 2 or 3 years for honeysuckles to get established. This will be year three in the garden- -fingers crossed!
Spring arrives: A honeysuckle starts to grow. . .
The previously overburdened and subsequently damaged apricot trees seem very happy about their pruning. Blossoms are opening already. It got up to 76 here yesterday, an unusual high for this early in the year, but then weather never seems like usual these days. There are no freezing temperatures in the 10-day forecast. I’m hoping the blossoms last long enough for pollination, and that the fruit can set successfully. I still have many quarts of last year’s apricot halves in the freezer, a good thing since the yield in even-numbered years tends to skew low.
Spring arrives with delicate apricot blossoms. . .
There you go with numbers again.
It’s become a part of our nature over the years, 9. Maybe it’s one of our superpowers? And so is our persistence in gardening. Local wisdom says don’t plant before Mother’s Day, but I may tempt fate and put in an experimental row of radishes, just to see. . .
Because today we have more than 12 hours of daylight to explore the possibilities! I can hardly wait to pick up my trowel and dig.
