When our winter weather is at its “winteriest,” our son Christian loves to call and remind us how much he is enjoying living in Arizona.
During the polar vortex, he called to say, “Your weather is so bad, it’s on Fox News!”
“Wish you were here,” I replied.
“I don’t,” said he.
I am a list-maker, and my most recent list is of things I can grow that he can’t. (I am grasping at straws to get through this winter!) Soon, and not soon enough, my hellebores (Lenten rose) will be covered with blooms. I planted them in the corner formed by the back of the garage and the back of the house. The big leaves provide cover for the duck that likes to make a nest there. Last year nine little ducklings called my bed of hellebores “home.”
Christian had a rattlesnake in his garage. And a scorpion. And a family of javelinas.
Christian can’t plant bulbs and peonies in the fall and expect a glorious spring like we can, either. What a joy to watch my “host of golden daffodils,” under-planted with purple grape hyacinths and drifts of Grecian windflowers bobbing in the gentle breeze of springtime. Elsewhere tulips are so elegant, they make me weep. Later in the spring or early summer, our peonies are so showy and voluptuous that I can’t stop taking pictures of them! Surely my springtime gardens are what gardeners in Mesa, Arizona, longingly dream to grow.
Still, I have to admit that I am very envious of the rosemary that grows like a shrub in Arizona and is covered with the most beautiful blue flowers in the spring. So, Christian can count that. I miss him and his family more than I miss spring.
