Rhododendrons 1, 2012
The way the weather’s been around here makes me a bit
reluctant to refer to late April as spring. March was more like June. Mid-April
was like what early March should have been. February was like April. The
climate was clearly playing with us.
I will admit, though, that early or not the azaleas were
glorious this year. Our yard is full of them, so many that it’s easy to take
them for granted until that moment when they all come together to weave a
carpet of pink and white and purple that spreads from the street in front of
the house to the river in the back. For that brief period they put on such a
show that you can’t help but feel like you’re not doing your part if you don’t
do something colorful, too.
The thing about azaleas, though, is that their blooms are
short-lived. And all it takes to make their life even shorter is one good storm,
which is exactly what has happened over the last couple of days. One day they
were a carpet of color. The next they were spread across the ground like
nature’s dirty clothes.
New Green, 2012
My father tried for years to grow rhododendrons. They’re
relatives of the azalea, and a staple of the Southern garden. But no matter how
carefully he prepared and tended his Kempsville soil, not a single rhododendron
survived in his yard.
The soil at our house is also not very forgiving. I’ve
invested and lost enough plants that I don’t even want to contemplate the total
cost. Over the years I’ve planted hundreds of hostas. Hostas thrived at our
last house, but are little more than vole feed here.
It’s taken a few years, but I have learned that there are
about a dozen things that will do well in our yard. Fortunately, rhododendrons
turn out to be one of those things.
Ours is decidedly a spring garden. It’s prettiest this time
of year. Once the roses and hydrangeas have done their thing by mid-summer, though,
we have little that blooms until fall. The late summer focus changes to keeping
things watered enough so that they’ll survive to the next season. I never
realized until I moved here just how ruthless the stately trees our yard is so
full of and that look so benign are when it comes to sucking all the ground
water away from the smaller understory trees and shrubs. Those who think
Nature’s all sweet and kind and balanced would do well to spend a season
watching the trees and shrubs and perennials in our yard duke it out for
moisture. It’s brutal!
It’s easy to focus on the colorful blooms of spring and
summer. But for me one of the best parts of spring is the soft green shade of
the new leaves that emerge from plants and trees. They’re the new growth, the
symbol of rebirth, the sign of nature’s cycle, and the thing that keeps so many
gardeners coming back. Later in the season they’ll turn darker. But for now
they’re sweet as a newborn baby’s fingers and toes.
And meanwhile, how about those rhododendrons?
Rhododendrons 2, 2012
Posts
