All over but the shouting

I feel like it’s the morning after. With good reason! Over the weekend my garden was part of the Atlanta Botanical Garden’s Connoisseur’s Tour and almost 2400 people came through to see this space.

In spite of weeks of my suffering through apprehension about the weather, worry that storms would destroy the garden or a freak late frost would kill all the blooms, Mother Nature smiled on Mother’s Day weekend and the weather was perfect.

It’s a little different to see the garden through the eyes of a stranger. Over the past months, I have literally walked hundreds of miles in this space and am intimately familiar with each part of the garden, But even so, any garden is a living, growing thing and mine seems to change daily.

If visitors had come three weeks ago it would have been all blue phlox and soft pink tulips. Three weeks before that it was a sea of blue scilla and snowdrops. And before that? The hardy, indomitable Lenten rose. Three weeks from now? You’ll have to come and find out but I’m guessing that it will be bright from blooms of summer phlox, bee balm, Japanese aster, salvia and Black-eyed Susans.

A garden is so much more than a pretty face – it’s more like an ongoing symphony with its own rhythms and dynamics. Sometimes one section will carry the melody, only to pass it on to a different section later on. Sometimes it is quiet with a soft, steady beat, at other times loud, clanging cymbals and still other times the simple melody of a few beautiful flowers.

Of course, you can plan for and plant a garden with all annuals that will look much the same for the entire growing season. And all those bright blooms would be pretty. But for me part of the magic of the garden is the ebb and flow of bloom, the mystery of the slow growth of the trees, the spread of the perennials.

There were other gardens on this tour, I am sure, that were exquisitely designed, planted and immaculately maintained. My garden is not one of those. It is far from “perfect” but fortunately, “perfect” is in the eye of the beholder and when I behold my garden I see not only what is in bloom today but the seeds of yesterday’s flowers and the buds of tomorrow’s blooms and it all makes me happy. It makes me want to run outside every morning to see what has changed and to sit every evening, in a quiet spot, listening to the birds sing a lullaby to put me and my garden to sleep.

When I look back on 2021 – 2022, I will not think first of Covid, or Ukraine, or abortion rights or the economy. I will think first of the garden and of the exquisite joy I experienced putting my hands in the dirt every day and then sharing this space with so many wonderful people.