In Our Garden

There is song and movement in our
garden and there is fragrance and
beauty in colour and shape and texture,
all geared to overwhelming the aesthetic
within us, grateful for the presence of
nature’s gifts to us, generous beyond fault
seeming beyond our modest expectations.

From early morning until sundown our
garden is gifted with the presence of
flame-bright cardinals lofting themselves
from peaked roof of garden shed to shelter
of leafy trees, to coniferous tree masts,
lustily trilling, thrilling our sound-
conscious souls with their melodies.

Robins sing in reflection of the weather,
where rain brings the birds to rapturous
anticipation of worms fleeing their sodden
homes. Hot-pinked roses rising on their
garden trellises, clematis clinging and
scrambling over fences and the tongue-
flaming honeysuckle so beloved of those
dauntless, fragile hummingbirds.

We rapture over the glorious, huge roses in
strident reds, those lesser-sized in mellow
yellows, and tiny fairy roses in pale shades
of pink. Not to be overlooked, the anarchy-
inclined chaos of Canterbury bells, rose mallow,
chameleon vine and Ladies mantle, so self-
besotted they do not hesitate to hoist aside
and overgrow other garden worthies.

They are not alone in their caprices, when
huge-leafed, lime-hued hostas, smother the
Stella d’Oro and the ranunculous surrounding
the soil in which the hostas are nested, crowning
their presence as lords of all they survey. Ah,
but the lilies thrive, valiantly blooming in the sun
their ally, the hostas’ deadly leaf-blanching curse.

The presence of our garden stalwarts, while
still spring, the peonies, and fleabane, Persian
cornflower, beard-tongue, geraniums, foxgloves,
mallow, lilies, Shasta daisies, delphiniums,
Princess spirea, Jacob’s ladder, present their
faultless architecture and their brilliant hues
their texture and their fragrance for our
daily inspection and grateful delectation.