Mustards and Plums

6:00 am. Sunday, March 26.

Tweeee-chirp-chirp-chirp. Tweeee-chirp-chirp-chirp. Over and over and over in the early morning dark. More insistent than the alarm clock I set for 7:30 this morning, the call for a mate in the tree outside my window evaporates all hope for sleeping in.

I bought some little vegetable starts at the early-spring plant sale last weekend. Now I need to make room to plant them. Yesterday, taking advantage of a warm, sunny afternoon, I harvested the last of the overwintered purple peacock kale, just the smallest, most tender leaves, some new dark red beet greens and a bag full young mustard leaves. Last fall’s mustard crop is growing so robustly now, I couldn’t bring myself to cut it all down just yet. But I did pull out all the old kale stems to make room for the new starts. Very soon I will have to harvest the rest of the mustards. I harvested the last of the bok choi and pulled out the roots. I now have three good-sized pots available for planting. Later this morning, I’ll refresh the soil in the pots and add some balanced organic fertilizer, and plant the new vegetables.

For dinner, I sautéed all the greens with just a splash of tamari soy sauce. Fresh, tender mustards taste like an antidote – sharp, cleansing, refreshing, curative. And delicious.

Their resemblance to store-bought mustard greens is merely that of family members. From the garden, they are not as sharp, and more complex in flavor. I eat them slowly, wanting to know their taste intimately, lingering, observing, trying to name and fix it in memory. 

Flowering Plum

Today, we are blessed with another beautiful spring day. The snowy Olympic Mountains gleam in the morning sun. A crow outside my window shakes still leafless branches of the tall western dogwood as it yanks something invisible to me off the bare stems. Is it gathering little twigs for a nest? Avenues of pink blossoms line the streets as flowering plum and cherry rejoice.

First day of spring?

This morning wind whips the tree tops around with enough force and range of motion to whisk the very air into a foamy froth. Spring arrives today with a flat sky, so uniformly gray it might have been spray-painted on. How can the sky be so expressionless above such wild motion?

February 1^st felt like spring! I could feel it flowing in my blood and bones. I delighted in the sun gleaming on wet Skimmia berries and Viburnum buds showing color. 

But the planet stepped back from this threshold of Eden. At least here in the Northwest, cold, rain, wind, even snow prevailed through the weeks since, even on this first day of spring. However, friends have been telling me that in the Midwest and on the East coast, the mercury has soared to summer-time 70's. What mystery is this?

Fog Attraction

On a recent early morning, the fog called me powerfully to come outside and feel it, experience its enveloping chill, and see the transformed world it created. Feeling a rush of excited anticipation, I bundled up quickly and grabbed my little camera and notebook.

The distant jagged Olympic Mountain range had vanished. Towering Douglas fir, hemlock and cedar appeared insubstantial as spectral wraiths. Mist swirled enticing tendrils around chimneys and rooftops. Soft and dreamy, icy cold, it drifted along the ridge top where I walked.

In the pre-dawn half-light while I slept, Nature transformed gardens into mystical Tiffany’s diamond displays. With a wave of the frost fairy’s wand, the smoke tree’s fluffy summer puffs became crystalline threads set against velvet burgundy, silver-edged leaves.

Cotinus, Smoke Tree

Heart-breakingly sweet, partially opened pink rosebuds offered petals dipped in sugar crystals. Ephemeral whiteness edged each bloom and leaf. Violet coral bell leaves looked to have been bedding for sugar plum fairies.

Heuchera, Coral Bells

This world will vanish soon, an early morning dream, an enchantment that will vaporize as daily human endeavors resume. But I will carry the memory, a blessing.

Pining

Trunk of an old pine tree halts me. The way it leans – not just leans, but twists and leans like a thickly muscled human body, strong, massive – captivates me. 

Deeply striated bark, like sinew, two limbs outreaching, an old knot where a branch once grew, so very like an eye, chunky gaps in bark form a nose and a vertical, open mouth in profile on the right – the pine appears in motion. Yet I am rooted to the spot, feeling a powerful sense of presence in this tree. I think of Tolkien’s Ents, and of ancient druids who worshipped tree spirits. Twice I begin to walk away, and twice I return. An almost gravitational force holds me in place, in awe.

 

Autumn Siren

'Brocade' Japanese maple and variegated hosta in autumn colors

Scarlet translucency of delicately fingered maple leaves enchant me. Form and color contrast against jungle of hosta. Giant foliage senescing in watercolor striations lures my eyes from tactile foreground focus to impressionist distance. Light and depth hold me as captive as Odysseus tied to the mast, lost in song. I cannot tear my eyes from this magical moment in autumn sun.

Foggy morning

Foggy morning. The massive trees two blocks away, madrona, horse chestnut, Douglas fir, dissolve their edges in the mist, bleeding themselves into the liquid air.

I wanted to photograph my witch hazel from my upstairs front window, but expected the light would be too soft. The tree surprised me. Its citrus colors glow, acid in the syrupy air. I marvel and delight at the bounty of hues and vignettes my tiny front yard offers this morning, despite the fog. 

Witch Hazel

Each leaf of the witch hazel paints a different picture of transition, some nearly uniform orange, some grading from yellow edges into deeper and deeper tones, sinking red at the heart.

The saturated lilac mantel of tiny berries on the beauty bush (Callicarpa) contrasts with the Hinoki cypress’s bold evergreen-ness and, wispy thin whitish-green mounds of Carex ‘Frosty Curls’ that line the path beside the shrubs.

Callicarpa - Beauty Berry

Twin coniferous blue spires of Chamaecyparis ‘Blue Surprise’ frame a bright lemon marigold, still robust just days before All Hallows Eve. 

Chamaecyparis 'Blue Surprise' and Marigold

 

I have not yet had the heart to pull the annuals out of my pots, not while they are still blooming, even though their replacements are bursting in pot-bound anticipation. Soon. Soon.

When I was growing up in suburban New York, my mother would store our out-of-season clothes in a big cardboard box on a high shelf in her closet. As summer (or winter) drew to a close, I’d become bored with the wardrobe I'd been wearing all season and excited to get the big box down and see what old favorites still fit, and of course go shopping for new school clothes in the fall. There was a seasonal smell I can still remember, an intoxicating mix of new wool clothing, new leather shoes and fallen autumn leaves suspended in cool fall air.

Wintergreen with berries and Heuchera

I remembered about the big box and the twice-yearly wardrobe change recently as I contemplated the overgrown summer annuals in my pots, and surveyed the purple, chartreuse, and marmalade and rose-colored heucheras, evergreen grasses, and winter pansies awaiting planting. The annuals are still looking good, and most will until first frost, but I'm itching for a change, just like when I was a kid excited to wear my new fall skirts and sweaters.

Calluna 'Firefly', blue fescue and pansy