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Slowing Down, Smelling (and Seeing) the Flowers Part 2

© Carol Wallace

Since the idea of these daily strolls is to get some very mild exercise and fresh air, I try to avoid pointing out weeds or any of the plants that the rabbits ate. I also try to distract my husband as we go by the rose garden. The way things have gone this year I have sadly neglected it. I didn't even manage to give all of the roses their spring haircuts, so that most of them have run together to form an impenetrable mass of thorny twigs with various colored blooms here and there, all tied together like a giant gift with streamers of an unknown clematis which has never, as far as I know, sent out a single bloom. Instead I direct his attention to the curly willow.

The willow outgrew whatever we had imagined it would do very quickly. Pretty soon it had totally cut off access to the next garden. We had choices - one of which was to let the poppy field (as we call it) become a dead-end garden. The other seemed to be to cut down the willow. Then I hit on the idea of cutting an arch into it. I wasn't sure if I could, but a couple hours worth of pruning later - I had an entrance/exit carved into the willow boughs.

Walking under the arbor we come to what really should be called the secret garden, because it is enclosed on all four sides - on three by stone walls and on the fourth by the willow. However, we have always called it the poppy field because that's what it started out to be - except that only about three of the thousands of poppy seeds I sowed germinated in the clay soil there.

But roses seem to like it, and calla lilies and columbine seed about freely - as well as the Lychnis coronaria that seeds about so freely - and even Stachys byzantina which supposedly despises clay and poor drainage flourish here. Last week the alba Meideland roses were so covered in white flowers that you could scarcely see foliage - this week they need a good going over with a whisk broom to get rid of the old, browning blossoms, but are still impressive. And the 'New Dawn' is still blooming bountifully over the arbor, to be joined today by two gorgeous blossoms of the double flowered clematis 'Duchess of Edinburgh.'

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