house and yard; garden and anxiety- nearly May, 2010

All pictures taken this week and pictured from top to bottom L to R:
* a small cardoon that was given to me by a neighbor as a seedling. It promises to grow to four feet wide and tall someday.
*a colony of ginger lilly that I threw in my compost heap last fall because I couldn't decide where I should replant it.
*the old fashioned and tough-as-nails climbing china rose "old blush."
 *strawberries that my wife bought yesterday from a roadside farmstand in Warren County.
 * dark violet spiderwort, whose good looks up close  make up for the fact that it can look lanky and weedy from ten yards away. 
*what I call a German iris; it will likely bloom for the last time this month unless I get around to moving it in August. It is getting crowded by siblings and covered in shade from three nearby shrubs. 

This will be my fifth spring living in our house and tending a yard fifty years in the making. Compared to April 2005, there is a lot less yard and a lot more garden on our slice of southwest central Durham.  Most of my efforts have been to shrink the lawn and maximize the good sun with flowering things. 

As we move into late spring, a familiar feeling of being overwhelmed has set in. But instead of responsibly pulling weeds from the perennial border this weekend, I predict that I will be sketching a homemade trellis of rebar shanks to support the  heavy, scrambling, hop vines that may overgrow my picket fence by late June. I am all daydreams these days with not enough fire in my belly to get all my chores done.  Of course I should remind myself that there is not a day of the year when all the chores can be done.