By Jill Williams
“The world’s favourite season is the spring. All things seem possible in May.”– Edwin Way Teale
There were no complaints around here about the cool rainy spring.
After the showiest spring ephemerals (bloodroots and hepaticas) I have ever seen, a solid month of daffodils came after that. I cut the last daffodils on the long weekend which has to be some of record. I was glad I had bothered to plant the little tiny fragrant jonquils as those were exceptional this year.
I did burn wood in May this year and I don’t remember the last time I had to do that. But there is something wonderful about having the stove on when the grass is green and an armful of wood goes a long way.
It’s interesting to see which plants respond to the heavy rain we have had this year. Ornamental rhubarb, which has a very impressive pink flower when it chooses to bloom, is looking huge and impressive this year. I planted this many years ago and it has so far only bloomed once. It looks a bit like the Gunnera that is the ultimates go big or go home plant in many English gardens. I admit that I had some Gunnera envy when I planted it and I haven’t been disappointed this year.
The poor alliums on the other hand don’t like all the rain. They’re looking very sad this year. I can live with that since almost everything else both wild and cultivated has benefited from the rain.
I was late planting sweet peas as it was too cold when I usually plant them in April. Looking in my garden book I see that last year even with all the ice storm chaos I was able to plant the sweet peas almost a month earlier than this year. They took about two weeks to come up. I’m long past the days of soaking the seeds first; it never seemed to make much of a difference. Now I just plant them and hope for the best. They’re supposed to grow to seven feet but I will be very surprised if they manage five.
I’m seeing that a lot more of the beautiful native red columbines have appeared in the woods. These pop up when the soil is disturbed and also, it seems, when there’s a lot of rain.
The lilacs and honeysuckle are both very lush this year and they obviously also liked all the rain. The common lilac is a menace if you have ever had to dig it out. But for a week or so in May it is glorious.
The phoebes have once again taken over the side porch as they do every year. Phoebes will reuse the same nest for years. This year they did some home improvement in the form of adding a little cedar bark and some mosses to make the sides of the nest a little higher. I know that they are just getting started as they usually have two families every year.
I wasn’t surprised to see a big part of the old beaver dam wash out with the very high spring melt water. I was surprised to see that it was almost immediately repaired as there hasn’t been a beaver pond here for many years. When there is a pond it’s just barely big enough to paddle a canoe in. In past years I have been able to paddle the little red canoe across the pond to the edge of the old mill dam. This dates to when the McMahons lived here many years ago. In those days there was a much larger pond and a water powered sawmill. There are too many mosquitoes to attempt this right now but maybe I will attempt it later in the summer. It’s always good to have something to look forward to.