Spring from the Sacred Circle

Fall was my favorite season all my life until the last couple of years. Now I seem to be moving toward an appreciation for spring that I did not feel in my youth. Perhaps it stems from the increasing dread of winter that I experience with every passing year.

Or, perhaps my love of spring is a product of owning a house for the first time. In the last six years I've planted a lot of things. Some took to the soil and are still with me; some lasted a year or two, then died; others didn't make it through the summer of the year they were planted. But these, my spring plants, have been coming back beautifully the last few years.

The view from the ground. I let the dandelions live in the back yard - not here.

The tulips didn't make it this year, though. Green stalks and no flowers. Sigh. I suppose this is what happens when it's mid-70s without a drop of rain throughout March and April, only to be followed by a snow and freeze in early May.

Colorado is a unique place.

I get a strange pleasure out of weeding. It's a boring, tedious job, to be sure, but there's nothing quite like the feel of earth under your gloves, of getting a patch of land cleaned up and trimmed. My favorite place to do this is in the sacred circle in my front yard. I created this space without any conscious intention of doing so, but it has become my favorite place in the yard. The birds, rabbits, and squirrels like it, too.

I'm endeavoring to make my garden as sustainable as possible. This means planting almost exclusively plants that are useful or edible. This is the herb garden: sage, parsley, rosemary, thyme, and feverfew. Before I had this idea, though, I was planting flowers, so it also includes lilies and irises that I put in a couple of years ago, leftover tulips and daffodils from the previous owners, a chrysanthemum that will turn the most brilliant shade of deep red in the fall, an odd spiky plant with red budlike flowers that blooms in late summer ("that looks like a straight-up weed," said my roommate's friend last year), and the pretty pink dianthus that my local garden shop was giving away to all the women on Mother's Day.

My grass patch brings the bunnies to the yard,
 bunnies to the yard...

 Startled this guy when I went out to take a picture. I am reasonably certain that one of his brethren were living in the hole under my house by the front door. I've since filled it in with mulch and have not, as yet, heard the cries of trapped little ones. Fingers crossed.









The purple salvia is an early and dependable bloomer. The bees love it. It kind of stinks, to be honest, but I love them anyway. There are three lavender plants here in between the salvia. I'm too lazy to go get a better picture that shows them all.

The circle is prettiest in spring, when the yellow bushes are in bloom (though the one near the tree is taking its time blooming this year). I have a particular fondness for yellow. The first bush I bought, in the back yard, is a forsythia that has become quite large and very beautiful in the spring. Poor thing, the mid-May snow and frost did a number on it and it will likely be another month before the foliage comes back as it was.

Spring is a glorious time. All Hail Gaea, Demeter, and Persephone. The time for growing green things has returned.