Special Delivery

Tulips with wild currant blossoms

Things are really picking up speed here.Tulips and anenomes are blooming away in the greenhouse. Fruit trees are firing off too. Gambling on an early planting of freesias paid off  as their tops are now cutting through the soil even before the last frost date.  The first series of sweet peas has begun climbing to the ceiling. A hundred new dahlias just went into the field; I hope they make it.

For some reason sweet peas are irresistable to the little birds flitting around the greenhouse. They pull them out of the ground like worms and then just leave them to die. They don't even eat them! Every year my relationship with these little chirpers  begins like Snow White  but quickly disintegrates to more of a Yosemite Sam standoff. The trellis is surrounded in bird net and battened down like a tiny prison camp.

Regardless of the avian mischief, the early blooms and fruit blossoms have opened up our delivery season. Delivering flowers is the best part of this job. Everyone lights up when they get flowers whether they're for a birthday, anniversary or sympathy. They're usually about love. Someone loves you and they're thinking about you and they're sending you something beautiful. I even get to help with the note sometimes. This is best done in Snow White persona.

Marching into Spring

Hail bounced off the greenhouse this week as I thinned out hundreds of baby seedlings safe inside. It's amazing how much protection a thin sheet of plastic can provide. No snow, no driving rains and a good 10 to 20 degrees warmer during the day now. Although we live in zone 8, I think the greenhouse must make it zone 9 which puts us fairly close to heaven. Yes, heaven is probably in zone 10.
March rages on outside with tantrums of rain, wind and snow but it can't stop the daffodils. They've just started blooming here. After the long, wet drudgery of winter in the Northwest, the color and fragrance of daffodils is like manna from the sky. My thoughts on this beautiful but often overlooked flower:

They loved the tulip, poppy and iris;

They painted roses by the score.

But what about the daffodil,
Snubbed by painters evermore?

Fragrance of spring, form exquisite;

Colors bright and blooms galore!
Why not a still life from dear Vincent,
Or a landscape by Renoir?

Alas, I fear, it is the trumpet

Jutting out from that fine face.
Every time you try to draw it
It comes out wrong and you erase!
                                       -S.M.