And the Wheel spins to renewal…

I finished up my work week a little bit ago (well, more accurately, I finished up for the day a bit early because once again I will be logging on over the weekend, but let’s not start picking nits, shall we?) and thought I’d take a quick tour of the garden before picking up the Denizens to get our weekend started.

Maybe, I thought hopefully. A few things will have come up since the last time I looked…

Have you ever had Life just sort of…rush up, grab your hand and shake it madly while screeching, “Hi! Good to see you! Awesome! Yeah! Hi! Great! I’m so happy to be here! I love you! I missed you! HI!!!!”?

All around the Den, in patches here and stretches there, are tiny little things like this:



Spinach sprouts. I’ve been tucking them wherever there’s an open space, from the front patch to along the “dark” side of the house (they don’t seem to mind if they only get partial sun – they’ll kind of prefer it, I think, when we get up into those triple-digits in a couple months) to the front patch between the blueberries.

Which, by the way, have gone from being dead-looking twigs to this:



Two are smaller, but this guy has just really decided to go for it!!

The artichokes are doing well…



…even the one I thought was a donation to the Snail Hunger Relief Foundation…note the skinny leaves, which were chewed all the way down to the middle rib…



The cranberries seem like to their new home just fine, too. They’re putting out bright green new leaves and starting to stretch a bit.



The surviving roma tomatoes are throwing off their nasty yellow color and developing new leaves. There are about fifty left; I’m still not sure about a few of them, but by jove I think the rest are going to make it.



Sunflowers are saying “howdy-do” along the back fence.



There are tiny little broccoli “clovers” starting to appear in the mounds. They’re so small my camera can’t focus on them. Hard to believe something that small will get as massive as broccoli gets in the end.

The cucumbers…are bored by the whole thing. They’ll come out when they’re darned good and ready, and not a minute earlier. (Cucumbers. They’re such divas…) (So are the carrots. “I said fourteen days and I meant fourteen days…quit walking around here looking for sprouts, there ain’t gonna be any for at least fourteen DAYS…)

But the green beans didn’t want to be left out of the party…



…and the butternut squash is feeling show-off-y…



…and the beets are all, We were here first, you know…



The peach / nectarine tree hasn’t lost the little fruits yet, either. I don’t dare expect them to hold on until they’re harvest-size, but I can’t help but hope.





Four thornless blackberry bushes are leafing up and spreading out.



And the heirloom yellow-striped tomato? Put on a flower today, just for the occasion.



Red potatoes.



And white potatoes.



And purple potatoes whose plant looks more like an exotic flower.



The milk/water spray appears to have worked well for the peas – there’s still white on the leaves, but there is significantly less of it. And the plants have erupted with new flowers and big, fat pods.



Up in the front patch, I also have a tiny patch of green in one of the summer squash hills.

As I was coming back in the house, already overwhelmed, a scent wrapped its arms around me. Dizzying and sweet, familiar, like old songs remembered…



The lemon tree has blossoms singing from every branch.

Just…wow.

The year-wheel spins around again, from the short death of winter to the new life of spring; what was stark and bare is lush and green, what was dark is light, what was cold is warmed, what was barren is fertile.

What blessed creatures we are, to live in such a world, where such miracles are commonplace!

…and where carrots occasionally come out of the ground looking like this…



Awesome.

OK! Onward, to the weekend! Ho!!