Full Bloom

I'm sure that you're just about as sick of garden posts are you are puke posts - but what can I say - that's what the last few weeks have been - puking inside, garden outside.  Hurray for you though, this time, I pick garden. 

I can't say just what it is that I find so captivating about our little garden this spring.  Out of curiosity I looked back over the last few years of photo archives and as I suspected - not a one.  So why this year?  Is the garden better?  Perhaps.  It's certainly fuller - lusher.  Could also be that the last few years of my life are a blur, so I didn't actually ever really notice the garden aesthetically before.  But I think it's something more - if you'll forgive my blatant sentimentality, I think I associate the garden with my children.

Flowers as children - it's not to big of a stretch.  They both start out as something so incomprehensibly small, protected and sheltered in the dark until they're brave enough to peak into the world.  At first sight they're so delicate, so tender, yet amazingly resilient.  You care and you coddle, you imagine what it will be like when they're grown.  Each day a little bigger.  Each day a little stronger.  Growing, stretching, blooming until one day you're taken completely by surprise by the beautiful blooms before you.

Our front garden peaks this time of year.  Each bush seems to compete with another vying for attention.  The Iris's and lilacs are first, quickly followed by the Roses.  Days later the Peony and Spider Warts unfurl their first blossoms.  At times the colors seems so vibrant and so intense it seems unnatural.  I'm always struck by the first bloom on the rose bushes and the fuchsia peonies in front of the yellow roses (currently Emma's favorite nail polish combo btw.)  The thing about our front garden is that I know within weeks 80% of this color will go, leaving us with a deep green bed for the remaining days of summer.

I feel more aware this time though parenting of the amazing passage of time.  Of that interesting anomaly that a day can be so long but that a month is so short.  After we brought the girls home from the hospital I think Tony and I both knew we'd have more children - and with that knowledge came a sense of security.  There was a peace in knowing that if we miss it this time - we can catch it again the next time around.  I know that it's never the same twice, but there you have it - my thought pattern.  The opposite is true now. The greenhouse is closed.  I know there will be no more babies and knowing that makes me hyper sensitive to the fact that each experience through mothering them is a last as much as it is a first.  I just don't want to miss a single bloom.  I want to plant the sounds of their voice, the touch of their hands, and the twinkle of their eyes in my heart and care for them in that safe place.

I knew that it was going to rain later this week and with that rain would come the end of the Iris's.  The powerhouse rosebushes would be missing a great deal of that dynamic first bloom... so not wanting to miss a moment, I ran outside this morning and snapped up the memories that I could.  And then turned around and got this pretty awesome memory too.

PS - More Jack pics tomorrow  but far less unabashed PMS style emotional writing.  Stay tuned!