Between abnormally cold weather and abnormal amounts of rain (for which, after all these past seasons of drought I am grateful, despite its inconvenience) garden clean up has been slow this year. I always begin with the main, more high maintenance areas, getting all the pruning and thinning done there, before I visit those blessed areas that are fairly maintenance free.
And all spring I kept getting surprises. Most of them were quite pleasant. More than once, I discovered that plants that I gave up for dead last year have come back - and vigorously. I had truly mourned the seeming demise of my Sambucus 'Black Beauty' which I couldn't even find in the garden last autumn. It was only a twig in a 2" pot when I got it - and somewhere in the drought, it dropped all of its leaves and appeared to stop growing. But this spring I found it had doubled in size, and is putting out leaves that are slowly beginning to darken to the appropriate ebony color.
I was even more thrilled to find the Full Moon Maple that I bought at the Philadelphia Flower Show last year had apparently resurrected itself. Ornamental maples are never cheap. I bought this one, babied it, carefully got it adjusted for the move from indoors to outside - and then we had a very late an unanticipated killing frost. It looked quite dead, but remembering the price tag, I planted it anyway, as an act of hope. The daylilies in that area of the property grew up and around it until it, too appeared to disappear. But this spring it put out leaves and appears to be quite happy and vigorous.
Even my salad patch survived. I am afraid I let the last batch go to seed - which it did, meaning that I now have mesclun mix without having had to bother with spring planting. This is a good thing, as I obviously didn't get to it.
Anyway, all over the gardens, I saw plants miraculously reappear that I had long ago mentally decided were dead.
Plants can amaze you that way. Many of them have a will to live even under adverse conditions that can put us humans, moaning about our individual aches and pains, to shame. One of the most wonderful things about spring are all the little miracles and surprises that we discover every day. At least they are usually wonderful.
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