The Back Forties

   The upcoming photos aren't entirely fair 'before/after' pictures. I've tried my best in these posts to match up aspects of a shot, using angles, distance and lighting, so that you, dear reader, feel that you are seeing the house as it truly was, as well as what it is becoming...but there just isn't anything I can do about the injustices of the seasons.

   Spring can't help itself...it is just so darn beautiful!

   So this is the immediate back of sweetlittlehouse sometime in early November just after I moved in; Pete had been camping out here for about two weeks. The baby-sized table is a school desk Pete had found in the shed and used as a sawhorse. We had just bought a bag of river stones from across the road (as evidenced by the lighter patch of ground to the left) to see how we liked them on the path. Clearly we hadn't yet found the back door.

   And now it is mid May and shockingly gorgeous. As you can see, we did like the river stones so we had two tons delivered...for fifty dollars..bless their hearts. The lovely green screen door seems as pleased to be here as we are to have it. And the beds are coming in zealously.

  Taking a few steps east toward the garage, and turning back to face the house, last November you would have seen this -

But now...again....glorious May-

And with your back to the house and looking toward the garage and screened-in porch, sometime before we found sweetlittlehouse, as this was a realtor' s photo...

And now...

And the sweet and sad and hopefully stable grape trellis I fashioned-

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And the equally sweet and sad and hopefully stable moss farm I've begun under the tipi-

And my native fern and violet bed under the Norway maple-

   And last but never least...our favorite views from the furthest back forty-

And another with the screened-in porch-

And now a wonderful surprise I found in the woods this week thanks to Loretta-

A jack-in-the-pulpit ...

and lady's slippers, presently blooming

I will never tire of Spring!

Planting for Spring

    Alas. Our hands are tied. We can not plant anything. It isn't the fact that we're still in danger of frosty nights...that has never stopped us before, though it should have. It isn't that we're over budget and shouldn't spend money on unnecessaries - though we probably shouldn't. Our problem is a splendiferous one.
   Surrounding the house are flower beds. In the bed outside the kitchen window grows a ten foot rose which we didn't cut back in the fall. Now there are clumps of dark purple crocuses. The problem - we have no idea what else is in there. We arrived in late October and don't remember anything but the rose and a money plant. All winter the bed has been buried under two feet of leaves, and we are just now beginning to clean it out to see what arrives. So far I've found a lime green croc and a tin bucket. The dig continues.

A pot of greens

    There is another bed directly beneath the window in the dining room. There grows another rose, a hydrangea, some sorts of grasses and fifty or so iris rhyzomes - thus far.
    The bed across from that one, beside the weathered fence, contains too much lamb's ear, more grasses, chicks and hens, wild oregano, Joe Pye weed, some mystery bulbs, and, again, we know not what else. For us, this Spring will be like Christmas.
    So I have a drawer full of seeds and no place to put them.

   But I lie. I have stuck in a few seeds here and there. Among the lamb's ear, at the suggestion of mama, I scattered some bachelor's button seeds before last night's rain. The morning before I planted some Russell's lupin along the short slate wall between the two beds. A hanging basket above the nuthatch house holds nasturtium and sweet pea seeds.

    The one place I do feel free to plant is on either side of the front walk. It seems to have been left to its own devices. Last fall I interspersed stones then moss to prepare for an herbal rock garden. The primroses from the kitchen windows await that move.

    In Connecticut, in the second week of April, we are still very thirsty for color, including the green of the grass; and we are still anxiously awaiting the first leaves. Man-oh-man, it has been one very long bare season and I hope with all my heart that I have color to send for Kate's birthday next week.
    But slap me if I'm complaining because this is the first week that the house is over sixty degrees and, as I write this, a chikadee and a cardinal share the feeder outside the window.

"Hope is the thing with feathers...

...that perches in the soul" and in the northeast it is thoughts of warm sun and crocuses and any color other than soiled-white that fires our icy and wearied imaginations.
Oh Spring...where are you?
   Every cold afternoon I walk through the snowful and soggy yard hunting for bulbs and fresh green shoots. For Peter and I, this spring will be extraordinarily exciting because we don't know what will be sprouting. What we do know is that the former owner of the house was an avid and Irish gardener.
   We have found the roses, some of which grow twenty feet into the trees.

These rosehips attract bluebirds

   We have found the grape which tangles itself relentlessly through the fence posts. We have been told by our lovely neighbor Patricia of the host of daffodils beneath one of the sugar maples.
  I have uncovered the tiny patches of bulbs which I hope will grow up to be grape hyacinths.

   Beneath one of the living room windows is a bush I pray is a quince and beside that imaginary quince is a beautiful and malignant wisteria.
   Among the moss I put down at the stone base of the house there are a few maybe-tulips forcing themselves through.

The moss we collected from the shed roof

   And beside our beautiful little shed poised here in its winter finery,

 is another pièce de résistance - a flowing and generous lilac.

Proactively added our own color to the landscape

      The only thing in the yard that has grown this winter is my tipi, which I hope will support sweet peas and morning glories in the early summer.

But first spring must come!