I took the camera into the garden yesterday and spent quite a bit of time finding the right angle, distance and composition for the shots I took. Many plants are coming into flower or are spilling over with the vitality of spring growth. The air almost crackles with this life force, and most of the colors look like someone has run the entire landscape through Photoshop’s Image-Adjustment-Vibrance-Saturation tool. Among the perfectly showy flowers and electric green foliage, however, some quieter, common scenes draw my attention. Those utilitarian places like the garden shed and the bench outside my kitchen door attract my eye.

They are not the most colorful or tended parts of the yard. There are weeds in the bricks, dried leaves stuck in odd corners, and the mishmash of the growing season everywhere. There is something satisfying about these spaces. They are just as pleasing to me as the flowers and tended spaces.

Houseplants have been sent to summer camp, herbs and annuals await planting, and the tools clearly feel valued and important. Even the hose manages to look attractive...

Sometimes simplifying isn’t a question of having less, but a matter of better preparation. I like knowing that a trowel, knife or pair of scissors is close at hand, no matter what part of the garden I’m in. This requires some advance planning and the willingness to have duplicates.

Having the right tool close at hand, so time isn’t wasted and tasks can be accomplished expediently, is perfectly possible. So at this time of year we’re posting flowerpots at strategic locations, and filling them with those implements that are frequently needed in the garden.

The entry to the vegetable garden. In the summer, a ball of twine is added to this tool jar.

I ordered Camassia from Brent and Becky’s Bulbs four years ago and planted it above in front of the veggie garden. I chose this location because, since it’s at the bottom of a slope, the location tends to be damp. Camassia is one of the few bulbs that does well in wet locations, so I figured that it was a natural.

These plants are growing in Annual Alley, the place for me to play with different combinations of annual plants each summer. Camassia is perfect because after it flowers in May, the plants very quickly disappear, foliage and all. By the time the annuals start to grow, the Camassia is sleeping again.

These plants are at their peak for about two weeks, and what a glorious fourteen days it is! Why would you want to purchase bulbs in the fall, plant them, and only have flowers for two weeks? Because in those two weeks you really see your garden.

There isn’t time to take these plants for granted or become accustomed to their presence. They are a holiday, shooting star, and the night of Obama’s election: an occasion to be savored because they are positive, happening quickly, and you are there to experience what can’t be repeated.

You don’t plant Camassia in spite of their short period of bloom…you plant this bulb because they are fleeting.

Two foot spires of beautiful blue flowers. Yum.

Every time I look at my rain garden I shake my head. Perhaps I’ve written about the red twig dogwood in this garden before…the one on the left is an over-achiever that reaches for the sky. The two on the right, five short feet away, are about half the size.

This garden is planted with varieties that don’t mind being flooded now and again. That’s what a rain garden is for, after all. It catches the runoff so that it doesn’t go to places where we don’t want that water to run: city drains, low places, and local bodies of water for example.

At Poison Ivy Acres this area catches the runoff from the driveway, along with all the various car emissions and droppings that we don’t want to be carried down to Lawrence Pond. This water and all it contains is allowed to drain and filter into the ground well above the lake.

But whether plants are placed where the soils are frequently swamped or not, we humans are often mystified by discrepancies in growth. One plant shoots up or is beautiful while another, placed just a short distance away and planted at the same time, is a fraction of the size. Sometimes that second plant is dead.

Every parent knows that within a family the children, raised in the same household, have completely different personalities. Every person who has a sibling or more than one dog has had the same experience. So why do we imagine that our plants will all be the same? Isn’t the problem our unrealistic expectations?

On Monday I helped some people in the perennial section of the garden center. I’d say they were yin-and-yang-customers…on the one hand they were excited about planting and ready to put something in the ground. I loved their enthusiasm and desire. On the other hand, they were grabbing anything in bloom without much thought or willingness to work with what’s possible.

They wanted only plants with flowers on them, and expressed the desire to have plants that would bloom all though the summer. I told them that the plants that are in bloom before mid-June are only flowering early in the season. I couldn’t think of a single shrub or perennial that flowers in April, May or early June that continues to bloom into July and August.

These customers weren’t content with my answer. “How about this one?” they’d say, picking up another perennial in full flower, hoping that my answer would be different. I tried to turn their attention to the fact that they shouldn’t be looking at their landscape as they would a room in their house…indoors we can decorate and have everything remain in place. Our gardens, however, are closer to a kaleidoscope where the colors and shapes are constantly changing and largely outside of our control.

With these people I failed in my mission. I couldn’t get them to move beyond their desire to plant an instantly flower-filled yard that would remain unchanged in the future. They did not like what I was saying, and wouldn’t be moved into reality.

Would it have been better, do you think, to just lie to them and say that yes, that Aubrieta and Aurinia would indeed flower all summer? I have to believe that ultimately this would lead to their disillusionment with gardening when they ultimately experienced reality.

I was left wondering how I might bring their unacquainted eagerness closer to my informed passion for plants. How to best honor and cultivate their willingness while allowing that they need time and space to grow into the awareness about plants?

If I judged this urn planting with my customer's eyes, I'd been to wonder if these pansies were worth the time and money...every year I say "Yes, they are!"

When I was at the garden center a friend who is a professional gardener called. She was wondering if we carried Echium and this led to a discussion of the reasons garden centers don’t usually stock biennials.

I love the Echium vulgare (viper’s bugloss) that my friend was asking about, as well as other biennial plants such as variegated Lunaria annua (money plant) and Verbasucm. Most of these I’ve initially grown from seed but now they seed and wander on their own. I edit and pull young plants when they are too enthusiastic or go astray. These are not instant coffee plants: some years they are magical, and other times they aren’t in evidence at all.

In a garden center, however, it’s hard to talk people into the concept of a plant that “grows one year, blooms the next, and then it dies.” The customer tends to tune out well before you get to “but usually it will continue to self-seed and travel around your beds, and you can pull out what you don’t want.”

Biennials are clearly well suited for gardeners but not for someone who wants total control over where and when their flowers grow. Just as we all need to put the right plant in the right place, we also need to choose plants according to our expectations and abilities. Right plant, right place and right plant, right person.

The variegated Lunaria are all in bloom right now and the purple flowers are the perfect spring color. I pull out seedlings, also present at this time, that are all green so that I get mostly variegated foliage.

The blue spires of Echium are in flower along with oxeye daisies. Both seed and grow well in gravel and other dry, well drained places.

A fan-trained fig tree, You can grow that!

A Kitchen Herb Garden: You Can Grow That!

Amsonia: You can grow that! May edition

Bearded Iris – you can grow that

Chionanthus virginicus – is this really happening?

Favorite Butterfly And/Or Hummingbird Plant? YCGT!

Grow Your Own Popcorn!

Growing Healthier Kids

Growing Strawberries in Hanging Containers/Grow Bags

Japanese Anemone: You Can Grow That! May Edition

Love Cilantro? You Can Grow That!

Love Fresh Strawberry Pie? You Can Grow That!

Pamela’s Thoughts on Growing Community

Surprise? You Can Grow That!

The New Zealand Flax or Phormium

Try Thujopsis as a Thriller!

Types of Gardens

You Can Grow That!: Edible Blooms

You Can Grow That – Solomon’s Seal

You Can Grow That (#3)~Lilacs-(Syringa)

You Can Grow That! – Roses

You Can Grow That! ~ Doublefile Viburnum

You Can Grow That! Bee’s Friend!

You Can Grow That! May 2012: Sunflowers!

If I’ve missed yours, let me know by email or in a comment. Great stuff!

The garden provides so many opportunities for wonder it prompts me to remind people that they can grow delight. A smile? You Can Grow That!

Later tonight I’ll post links to the other Garden Bloggers who are writing You Can Grow That! posts today.

On this second day of Gifts From The Garden Month I’m thinking about one of the biggest ways we benefit from gardens and gardening. Most of us don’t work the land in order to raise food for the winter. In fact, the majority of people are inside for more time than they are out of doors. More comfortable in cold or rainy weather, certainly, yet we all lose a great deal from this arrangement.

Gardens allow us to reconnect with nature. In fact, I suggest that in order to garden successfully, joining with the natural world is pretty much a necessity. It’s also extremely entertaining and informative.

Gardening asks us to keep our eyes and minds open. If that’s not a gift, I don’t know what is.

The Dog wants to be outside all day. He drags his paws when we call him in, suddenly finding spots that must be sniffed or itches that demand scratching...anything to avoid coming indoors. He's probably on to something.