Thanks for the nectar

I didn't know that a peony bud and a black ant were the perfect couple. Thanks to a phenomenon called biological mutualism, the ant sips a tiny bit of nectar from the bud without disfiguring it, while the peony benefits from the ant's predatory nature as it wards off other insects that can harm the flowers.There are so many surprises in a garden. The biggest surprise will of course be actually harvesting fruits and vegetables.That's all some weeks away since the last frost in Minnesota is sometime around Mother's Day, and things are just getting started. A few weeks ago I didn't know what any of these things popping out of the ground were. I can name them all now, and I've learned not to believe everything I read about them. Dame's rocket and Solomon's seal are a weeds (a.k.a.wildflowers with a propensity for spreading) according to some, but I'm hoping they pop up again next year. My goal is to have a garden full of native plants, very loosely choreographed--a bit shaggy around the edges where it meets a lawn that, I hope, will be taken over by wild clover.

Going outside is the first thing I want to do in the mornings, or at least walk around looking out all of my windows. It's a kaleidescope out there. A turn of a calendar page changes blossons to leaves, or a blooming redbud to a blooming Japanese barberry. One day the pinkie-sized flowers of the false starry lily are replaced by lillies of the valley.In a week a dead looking stump transforms into a grape vine. Soon the ferns will be knocking on the windows asking to be let in.

Bob Dylan is 80, and in a couple months I'll be asking where all the flowers have gone.

The Ephemerals

Plants known as ephemerals respond readily to spring's early warmth and fade back into the earth during the heat of summer. So I've read anyway. I bought my house in December. The yard, as far as I could tell, was grass bordered by curving beds of gravel. How Zen, I thought. Maybe I'll make hypertufa garden orbs, grow some herbs and vegetables in some big pots and call it a day. It's been a cold spring in here Minnesota, but in the last couple of weeks green things are rocketing out of the ground. There will be no room for garden orbs. I'm trying to make sense of it all, using an app on my phone to ID things and marveling at the fortitude of the plants pushing their way through a thick layer of black garden cloth and gravel. I'm also trying to make sense of the death of my friend Shanna, who left this Earth by her own hand not quite two weeks ago. As another friend put it, depression is a murderer and a liar. Shanna pushed her way through a layer of darkness, and I was in a writing group with her as she blossomed. I never shared a meal with her--or even a drink or a cup of coffee--our common ground was writing and struggle. Her own rough life gave her a nose for the sadness and pain of others.Shanna emailed me more than once when I was at the bottom to tell me to see her therapist. As I remember it she followed up with a phonecall. I went to the therapist. I made it out of the bottomless hole I was in. Shanna made it out too. She wrote a novel,Oh!You Pretty Things a few years ago that got all around fine reviews. She moved. I moved. We weren't ever see each other/talk regularly friends--and time and distance, well,you know how that goes. Things happened that I don't know about. Then Shanna got Covid in November and shared her struggle on Facebook. She was super sick. I posted on her wall like a zillion other friends. I PM-ed her now and then to not clutter up her wall of well-wishes, so numererous were the messages from friends and fellow writers. But she didn't get well and became a long-hauler. And overwhelmed by Covid and god knows what all, she took her life. Muffin and cupcake, she'd call me and the other writers in our group. Sweet cakes and sparkle pie. Shanna was a secret sauce of heart-aching empathy cut with wicked wit and profanity. Honestly, there was no one fucking like her. Not even close. I haven't felt like doing much this past ten days. I pull weeds and put comments from my fellow writers into the appropriate folders for the essays I'm trying to finish. I cut out images for collages, but don't make anything. I look at the Virgina bluebells in my gardern and think the word ephemeral. They'll be gone soon, I guess. But you wouldn't know it to look at them right now. Ephemeral.