May Days

I guess there's just something about spring in a temperate climate that I can't get over. As the lyrics to a song by the Urban Hillbilly Quartet puts it, "Same thing, every spring."

Now spring means the neglected triangle flowerbed in front of our house row with a fake, black-painted water pump in the center is festooned with irises. This fills me with secret glee, because the triangle used to be a dry, lifeless nothing. Over the years I kept plying it with perennials to see if anything would survive there. This season, for the first time, the irises have triumphed. They emit a tantalizing sweet-sour scent not unlike that of wine, and their peach and purple/white ruffles resemble royal garments. They must be close cousins of the lily, because, as Jesus famously exclaimed, "Not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these!"

I've finally figured out the difference between Johnny-jump-ups and pansies (I think). The latter are unfurling their burgundy, cream, and purple velvet in my backyard. The former, in a large terra cotta pot on my front porch, miraculously sprout enough diminutive yellow and violet-cream blooms to fill a glass bowl as a table centerpiece every week.

A plant whose name I don't know (and which I came dangerously close to uprooting as a weed, multiple times, having forgotten that I planted it) just unveiled its contribution to the pretty world: tall spokes with vertical rows of rosy, boxy blossoms.

Nearby, the flamingo-colored azaleas are already falling in the rain. Delicate columbines bob above the fray like fancy purple bells, back for another round of ringing.