A couple days ago, during a brief warm spell, I made a circuit of my gardens to see if anything was sprouting yet. And… yippee!...there are many signs of life, including crocuses...
daffodils...
and species tulips.
I took note of myriad clean-up jobs that await me, once the weather warms up for real: dried stalks and stems to be cut back, misplaced mulch to be returned to its proper place after our recent heavy rains, windblown leaves and debris to be raked out of corners…
But what’s this? Where did this little pot come from?
I picked it up, pulled the dried plant stuff from the top, and found this:
Puzzled, it took me a minute to dredge up the memory of that pot of muscari from last spring. It must have been rolling around out there in the wind all winter long—and we get some mighty strong winds off of the reservoir behind us, as I’ve mentioned before. How these little bulbs survived—or even stayed in the pot!—is beyond me.
The pot is a very thin plastic, and there’s not much soil in it. It would be like setting a package of bulbs on the ground for the winter and expecting them to sprout. All I can think is that they must have had just enough snow cover to protect them during the worst parts of the winter.
It’s a humbling sort of experience for a gardener. We plan and prepare to get our precious babies ready for the coming cold, yet these forsaken and unprotected little miracles did just fine on their own. Who do I think I am, that they should need me?
“Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower—but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.”
—Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)
