Garden Deluge

The garden is sodden. For that matter, everything is. The rain is incessant, determined and ongoing. Remarkable, quite. We'd gone out last evening to have a look at the sky. A new full moon, with white-white clouds scudding quickly across the moon. A sight that merited some photographs. I seem to be obsessed with garden photographs. The garden is never still. Look away and something different happens. Already the tomatoes have formed, and we have small, perfect green plum tomatoes hastening to become food for our table.

Our small herb garden is bursting with tarragon, oregano, parsley, sweet basil, thyme and chives. They are all valuable to me in the kitchen, apart from their own natural beauty as growing things. Our salads taste fresher and more piquant with their addition, as do omelettes and cooked dishes requiring the zing of their presence. Pizza tastes and smells far more tempting with the freshness of oregano and basil from the garden.

So much for last night's moon, and partially clear sky, following a day of intermittent rain. The clear sky became overwhelmed with clouds heavy with rain and down it came, pattering on the windows all night long. And well into the morning. It wasn't, actually, until past noon that the rain stopped. Almost stopped. Not knowing whether we'd have any clearing at all, we decided to venture out into the ravine regardless, and dressed appropriately. Nicely, ten minutes into our walk, rain stopped.

We had no sun, but we did have a cessation of the rain. Until late afternoon when it started again, well into the evening hours. But that quiescent period gave us an opportunity to go out into the garden as well. Too sodden to do an awful lot with. My husband began cutting up the limbs of the old apple tree. It will feed cozy evenings in our little wood stove in the family room. And I began transplanting a few hostas, lilies and foam flowers from the soon-to-be excavated garden into other garden beds, happy to receive new volunteers.

I also took the opportunity to pluck baby red heuchera out of the interstices of the paved bricks on our front walkway. They grow there, under the watchful eye of the mother plant, a huge red heuchera that seems to pride itself on its fecundity. I place them carefully in the gardens, where they will grow to lovely maturity. Day lilies are now in bloom, and the Stella d'Oro lilies as well, opening their beautiful yellow vases. Coreopsis add to the yellow in the garden, sprinkled among the reds and the pinks and purples.

Yesterday, one of our kindly neighbours helped my husband move our Three Graces statue and its plinth to another location, vacating the space it has held for a decade and a half. It sits now more or less centred in the backyard. We could think of no other place for it, without disturbing too many other things. Growing things; there have been sufficient disturbances in the gardens. The demure Greek maidens giggle in close proximity to bold, unclad-but-for-a-fig-leaf Discobolus.