Pieces of a Rainy April Morning

The Herb garden, greening up.

The cafe cutting garden will be ready for tables very soon.

Planting seeds between the existing rows of salad greens.

I spent the better part of this morning taking advantage of the heavy mist that has been falling since yesterday and worked in the gardens.  I potted up small lavender plants that are ready for sale, planted seeds in between the rows of green lettuce and colorful radicchio in the salad portion of the parterre garden, added plants to the cafe cutting garden, lingered in the herb garden and pulled weeds out of the nice, soft dirt in every garden.  By lunchtime, I was feeling fairly damp myself, with hair plastered to my head, clothes splattered with mud and soggy, wet feet.  It was a glorious morning to be outside and enjoy the weather...Truly!...if you are a gardener.

The pink dogwood tree looks like a Mother's Day corsage.

I could just live in these branches filled with pink!

I glanced at the pink dogwood, in full bloom and shining brightly in the gloom of the drizzle.  It reminded me of a beacon in the night welcoming sailors, coming home from sea duty, as they look toward their port for familiar lights to greet them after many months away.   It looked happy, all tangled up in pink blossoms and relishing the raindrops!

Bittersweet beauty, blooming heart.

I really like the color pink!

Another piece of this rainy April morning was the bleeding heart bending and drooping gracefully, catching raindrops and hiding fairies under it's fanned-out and pointed leaves.  The rain, lending these flowers a certain sleepy peacefulness, created an almost bittersweet aura about them.  Bleeding heart owns a quality of humility that many pretty flowers simply do not possess.  Yet, in the language of flowers the bleeding heart represents elegance and fidelity.

Lavender lilacs - truly lovely!

Lilacs budding out

The deep purple and very tight buds of a Miss Kim lilac bush.

And then, within the the deepening green of the pine trees, I spied from the corner of my eye, puffs of lavender nestled in the arms of heart-shaped leaves--lilac blossoms beginning to unfold on this rainy morning and scenting the air with their sweet fragrance.  Lilacs were my mother's favorite flower and, if you grew up in the Midwest, like I did, you would know why.  Lilacs love the cold, harsh winters and cold springs of that area, more so than they do here in the mid-Atlantic, making them a spectacular flower--big and fluffy and showy in their lavender, pink or white splendor.  They can be very lovely here as well, although they never seem to display quite the panache as I remember them when I was a little girl in the suburbs of Chicago.  Perhaps because lilacs are one of the first blossoms of spring in the Midwest making them part of garden royalty there.

In any case, the lilac bushes in my yard are lavender conveying the first flutterings of  new found love--love of rain and spring and flowers galore.  This springtime morning was certainly glorious and, because of the much needed rain, nothing could dampen my spirits.