Forget-Me-Nots

Blue along the drive ...

I have posted several times recently about spring this year—which I think is more about the way I'm noticing it, after much of the past year seemed caught in an earthquake-induced stasis against which seasonal change did not register …

Or putting it another way—it felt, for a long time, as though "winter" was a state of mind, one that was going to endure forever.

At any rate, I've really been noticing this year's

... and in the garden

spring. And today I realised that various parts of my garden have become a mist of blue—the delicate, joyful blue of forget-me-nots. Now I know that a lot of people regard forget-me-nots as a weed—together with a few other plants that are perennial in my garden, such as Flanders poppies and columbine—but I feel that any "ordinariness" potentially associated with forget-me-nots through the rest of the year is more than compensated for by seeing that mist of blue across my garden every spring.

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Up close ...

And like all good things, forget-me-nots, too, should be shared; hence the pics.

I was also delighted to spot the purple irises in their midst, which are not just the first for this year, but also the first blooms I have had since I planted them out seven years ago. I transplanted the roots from my mother's garden, together with the surrounding Michaelmas daisies, but although the "daisies" (really an aster in the case of the Michaelmas kind, I believe) have flowered vigorously every year since, the irises have required more patience.

... and 'it's a first': those purple irises flowering against the blue

A friend told me a while back—when I was a-worritin' that I wasn't spending enough time in the garden because of book commitments—that "gardens are patient." So perhaps it's fitting that gardeners are patient, too.