dear garden diary,

sunrise
10 May 2014

sunset
10 May 2014

From under our oak tree, the tree I see when I close my eyes, I've been creeping around watching things grow. Tulips are appearing, maybe some Lili of the Valley too..., not entirely sure who else. In the back - in the garden bed we're removing entirely to make way for dogs and two wind-breaking, privacy giving blue spruce - I'm finding hostas, daylilies, and maybe iris(?) but it's soon soon and cold for them to identify themselves. They'll all be relocated somewhere along the south border.

From under the oak I also find a great view of the harbour, the park, and our Wild Thing trees. As I began writing this post I was staring out the window, watching a man walk with a skip in his step across the park and as he passed the Wild Thing he tapped one tree then backtracked a bit to tap the other. Saying hello? 

Who else loves those trees as much as I do?

This is the May of April showers. The few nice days we've had have turned out backyard and shack into a garden in progress. Plants and pots everywhere, bags of planting mixes heaped on the back wall, tools leaning. It's beginning to look less like someone else's boring shrub garden and more like Amy's natural disaster. GRIN

Saturday was a good day in the midst of misery. An enormous number of plants followed us home from lunch, and I can't even be entirely blamed (Rohan is as bad as I am so long as he can eat it).

The evening that followed found me laughing hysterically with Cathy and Lori as the sun set, then sitting fireside with my best friend and best love until midnight. Warm enough to stay in flip-flops, cool enough to want to add leg-warmers to my ensemble.

What all this time outdoors has taught me is that wind may be a bigger problem than I had anticipated. It can be wild. When it dies down the air here is fresh, it has never felt settled - there are just too many places for it to swirl around, over and through. I'll have to make sure everybody has a buddy, a plant to lean on, you know. 

I spent today planting in a cold wind and a bit of drizzle a few feet from the fire pit:

russian sage 'peek-a-boo blue'

virginia bluebells

scabiosa 'butterfly blue

carpet phlox 'sapphire blue'

aster 'wonder of staffa' (blue)

clematis 'sea breeze (blue)

liatris 'purple blazing star'

lilac 'beauty of moscow'

echinacea 'emotion bright orange' and 'marmalade'

agapanthus 'blue globe'

achillea millefollium - yarrow 'red beauty'

anchusa azurea 'dropmore'

anemone hupehensis 'praecox'

lilium 'strawberry vanilla'

The pot of enormous size that lives in the corner of the patio was there when we bought the house, and I'm undecided about leaving it there. For now, for lack of a better idea it will stay (and because it's too damn heavy for anyone to move..). I've seeded a bunch of gourds and miniature pumpkins that should be strong enough to climb from the pot over the obelisk, and maybe strong enough to withstand the wind. We shall see.... 

September charms and trinkets

The sapphires came from a Mining Matters silent auction, Rohan gave them to me for my 39th birthday. Always loved the dainty little blue bracelet, and thought of it as a lucky charm for no reason at all. Sapphires are September's birthstone, and I've always loved September.

The baby I miscarried in 2012 was due in September; Finn was born in September ...and lost in September. 

It was just a silly joke throughout my pregnancy..., to make it to September so our baby would have a sapphire birthstone. I don't like the August peridot ..and being married to a geologist, these things matter. Or, at least they used to. 

As a gardener, September is the month of harvest, of lushness in late summer plants; beginning deep in greens and ending washed in colour. With most leaves still hanging on to their branches, September trees are the best trees - even better than spring blossoms, I think anyway. It's an absolutely beautiful month. A combination of flip flop and warm sweater temperatures perfect for days in the sun and nights by the fire...

 ...That's what Finn experienced in his short life, sunny days and cozy nights. I'd say that makes me happy if it break my heart so painfully.

When Finn was born there was apparently a great scramble to get some baby boy charms for the Pandora bracelet Rohan had already - waiting for the right time to give it to me; which he did on the Friday after Finn was born (with day two postpartum hormones kicking in). He and Hannah enjoyed poking fun at my tears of boy joy, it being at the time a moment we would laugh about for years to come... ..how could I ever have imagined what those charms would come to mean. When Finn died, when he was taken out of my arms, I remember asking Hannah to take the bracelet off. I couldn't look at it...

I put if back on for his service and will never take it off again. The charms I wear are all for Finn.

Yesterday the little dragonfly bracelet I ordered inscribed with my little boy's name arrived and has been added to my wrist, falling near one of the little dragonflies that surrounds his hand-print tattooed on my arm.

I've ordered a number of lockets and charms with inscriptions, dragonflies, asters, sapphires, anything blue, his beautiful name... they dangle off his photos that hang around the house. I'm not sure I understand why these trinkets matter so much, but they're here and I want to see them and hold them. 

I want to see him, and hold him.