What is it about potentiality? The rose garden and wildflower bed are muddy messes at this point, but I came in last evening (reminded by my long-suffering husband, who barely knows spinach from spirea, that it was 7:30 and we might at some point want dinner, which I had promised to fix) filled with the sense of well-being that (sorry, wonderful students) grading papers rarely gives. Neither garden is anything to look at right now: the paths are laid out with cardboard and bags of Black Cow, the shrubs and daylilies are barely leafing out, the ornamental grasses are recognizable only from the last year's remnants, and the only bloom is one sorry daffodil that managed to hitch a ride on rose roots. The wildflower bed in particular is likely to need a couple of years to look like anything much as I'm starting little bluestem and blue fescue from seed (let's hear it for the single stems of baby grasses, which look like green thread in their little peat pots), so they may not even bloom this year. But the garden of the imagination is in full bloom: in August, tall, sultry Madame Isaac Pereire will waft her perfume across the garden, accompanied by her entourage of magic lilies and "Mystic Merlin" malva. The burgundy leaves of "Black Lace" elderberry will complement the smoky salmon and plum tones of rosa "Cinco de Mayo" while the clear green of daylily foliage keeps the various pinks from competing with each other. Across the path, in the wildflower bed, purple coneflower and black-eyed susans will bloom happily amidst the pink sprays of muhly grass, while the gardener sits in Adirondack chair with a glass of chilled chardonnay and enjoys the view....
In the real world, the green bean seedlings on the dining room bookcase have been decapitated by one of the cats. We suspect Mittsy the mutant, hurling champion of greater Parkersburg.
(Image credit: http://www.public-domain-image.com/)
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