Truncated Spring

Merely a few weeks back, on March 14, I wrote a blog full of hope for a gradual and beautiful Spring. "Irrepressible Spring", I titled it.  At the time, we'd had warm weather and it looked like everything was in place for a gradual, unprecedented garden year.  The plants were all greening and budding up.  Redbuds and lilacs looked like I've never seen before.  To borrow the style of our current President, "no one in Kansas has ever seen anything like it before, it was going to be spectacular!" 

It turns out that Spring can he suppressed. Now I'm reminded of Euripides; "Deus quos vult perdere, dementat prius", which Google translates as "God first drives mad, those he wants to destroy."  One very cold night about two weeks ago, as in my last blog, my hopes turned to dust, to browned buds of yet-unborn flowers and shriveled leaves. Early growth on the roses was wiped out, daylilies were killed down to the ground, and most buds on lilacs browned and fell off.  My redbuds never bloomed, nor did the forsythia to any great degree.  The bloom of Magnolia stellata I featured in the previous blog is, alas, the only one I am to see or smell this year.  To give you some idea of the losses, the picture at left is Magnolia 'Jane' just 3 days ago, a few stray buds blooming near the ground, nearly every other bud on the bush a dried and shriveled husk. 

Of all my lilacs, only 'Declaration', a Syringa hyacinth cultivar, bloomed in any abundance, an entertaining treat to the bumblebee as pictured above.  Three or 4 years old, it struggles in a dry summer, but is now repaying my efforts to periodically give it some extra water.  I'll gladly accept its tribute to my toils.

Paeonia tenuifolia, the Fern-leaf Peony, survived the cold, which didn't surprise me now because I know the delicate foliage hides a resilient nature.  A month ago, this clump was 6 inches high and the new foliage felt like velvet, its promise still curled against the cold.  Now it blooms alone in my front landscape; a bright red remedy for a broken heart.  

Of all my Magnolias, only the blooms of tardy 'Yellow Bird' survived the frozen night.  Now, it lights up the back yard, the only sign of its struggles perhaps that its yellow hues are a little lighter  than in previous years, at least it made it through the cold.  A lot of my Spring optimism rides with 'Yellow Bird' each year, so I'm thankful to see that its delayed timing strategy worked once again.

Now, I bide my time, waiting to see what recovers; to discover what will develop and flower normally and what may still yet be affected.  The peony, rose and daylily seasons come in rapid waves of succession soon, and, chastened, I hold no anticipation now that all will be normal in the year to come.  I merely will wait and hope the garden will provide.