It's a Growing Time

Springtime is my favorite gardening season. Everything is so new and full of possibility.

The Ozark Black apple tree that tried so hard to die last year has rallied in a nearly miraculous way, filling out, blooming and setting fruit. Its companion, the Winter Banana, is abundant with apples to the point of needing thinned. St. Francis stands careful watch over them day and night.

No, there's not much to eat yet. A bit of lettuce, a radish or two. But there's arm loads of iris to perfume the house and peonies close to bursting. My grandmother's poppies are beginning to open, shocking the bed with iridescent orange. Purple cone flowers sport crowns that will turn to buds, and eventually to seeds the finches adore.

Tomatoes and peppers are new and without blemish. As I weed around their still fragile stems, I dream of fresh salsa, bruschetta and caprese salad. Herbs are taking over. Mint has marched into the yard, no amount of tea, mojitos or juleps could ever use it all, but try we must as the run for the roses approaches.

Blueberries are flush with tiny nibs, still green, while the blackberries continue in a riot of fluffy white. They'll both soon need netted, lest we lose the crop to birds.

From the sprouts to the budding, the flowers to the frisky birds, it's a time of miracles. Hope. It's a growing time.

"It's a growing time
It's the springtime of the year
It's a growing time
The sun is moving near
It is yours and mine
The days are ours to share
Within our peaceful garden
And this growing time so fair"
-Dan Fogelberg