Crickets

The Chemlawn truck prowled around the neighborhood this week. People pay companies to spray poisons on their gardens. I hope for rain -- cool wet days to wash away the poisons before the chemicals complete their killing.

By late April, crickets sing their scratchy songs every evening. I walk down the driveway after dark and listen.

I pass the house to our West. The yard is completely silent. I continue down the street. The next house is also silent. The house after that has crickets. They are lawn people, but they also have two small daughters.

I continue the cricket inventory. Our neighbors to the East have no crickets. The next yard or two down the way is also silent, but at the corner, crickets are singing their happy tune.

Back in my own garden, I listen. So many crickets -- they make me smile. May they be abundantly fertile.

Purple

In The Color Purple by Alice Walker, Shug Avery explains that the color purple is God's way of showing love. "I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it."

Tradescantia ‘Purple Profusion’
Spiderwort blooms for weeks in the spring, rests for a month in the hottest part of summer, then blooms again for weeks in the autumn.





Iris cristata
The crested iris is only three inches tall and disappears when the weather gets hot. A good spreader, there is a two foot patch of Iris cristata near the birdbath in the back garden.
This year, a hungry visitor nibbled the blooms off every iris except this one, which was hidden by a clump of bloodroot, Sanguinaria canadensis.

Viola cornuta

Johnny Jump-ups are so sweet. The yellow ones set off the purple ones nicely.

Everyone notices purple in my garden, thank God.

Goboon

Discovery:
Members of my household are unfamiliar with the word "goboon."

Goboon?? Howls of laughter. Never heard that word before.

The peacemaker surmised that "goboon" is a colloquialism in common usage in the midwest among people of Slovenian origin.


But does "gah-BOOON" sound Slovenian? Not to me.


This a language that produced sounds like hoo-DEECH and GAH-teh, names like Dobroslavovich and Milharsic and Floreancig, where g's and c's always seem hard and j's run around wild.


Gah-BOOON. How to spell it is a mystery. Gah-BOOON could not be found in a dictionary.



Usage: There is a goboon of azaleas in the back garden.





There is a goboon of mayapples near the downspout at the corner of the house.





There's a goboon of bracts on the neighbor's dogwood.

Goboon. Wonderful word, and if it isn't one, it should be.

Highway

In the middle of the night, the sound of the highway is a chorus of mechanical voices. Altos hum and tenors drone with an occasional rumble of baritone.

Low murmurs and mumbles and moans, with an enormous hollow echo, going on and on.


At 5:20, Amtrak passes by, sounding its whistle.

Last week, my daughter took her first train ride on Amtrak to New York. You should try it, she said. It was da bomb.

But I know no one in New York. In the middle of the night, I listen.

The dog wakes and walks to the door. Outside, the air is cool and damp with the earthy scent of spring. I walk down the driveway behind the dog, looking for deer, disappointed that the street is completely empty.

Garden tour

A woman walked past our house and mentioned that she liked to see the changes that I make to the garden. I invited her for a tour, but she just walked on by.

My daughter Julia came for a visit and I asked if she would like a garden tour. She reminded me that I had just given her one recently.

I can't get anyone to take the garden tour.

Here's what they are missing:

In the front garden, spring wildflowers take in the sun while the tall oaks are still bare of leaves overhead.

In early April, Virginia bluebells are at their peak. They are among the earliest of bloomers.

Near the Virginia bluebells, the mayapples have just opened their umbrellas. Jacobs ladder can be seen in the background, but the wispy blue flowers do not photograph well.

Carolina jessamine invites visitors to the back garden.

Beyond the Carolina jessamine is my new garden bench, a birthday gift from my husband.

To the left of the new bench is a Asian hybrid azalea that refused to bloom for 10 years. Three years ago, I threatened it with a shovel. Finally this year, it bloomed for the first time.

When the flowers of the bed buckeye tree open, it is time to put out the hummingbird feeders.

The bloodroot is almost finished blooming, but this last pair reminded me of two beautiful daughters dressed up for Easter.

Happy spring.