The Japanese iris are about to open. I hope. Behind and on the right in the raised bed are onions and potatoes, and in the center background are the white peonies, which can no longer hold their heads up, and behind them tall, wispy asparagus plants. We’re letting them grow for another year before beginning to harvest the young shoots.   

I had to hold the stem of this peony while I took the picture.

Beyond the rosemary and cilantro, Ernesto checks his baby lettuces.

With the asparagus growing tall and spindly and the peonies tipping over from their own weight, this quote from The Invisible Garden, by Dorothy Sucher, seemed perfect for today:

Gardens give their owners so much joy and discontent that sometimes they seem to be a metaphor for life. There is more to them than meets the eye; all sorts of memories and emotions cling to them. … [T]he delicate, finely-cut ferns of asparagus bring to mind the memory of a beloved grandfather; the sumptuous globe of a peony, bending under its own weight, serves as a reminder of a child’s wonder at what seemed to be drops of blood on the white petals. I think of this complex of conscious and unconscious associations as an “invisible garden” that each of us, gardeners and garden visitors alike, carries around. These associations remain dormant until the plants we happen to be looking at reawaken them. Then old, half-forgotten feelings wash over us, perhaps joy and pleaure, perhpas loss and pain. We can never know in advance how walking through a garden wlll make us feel. Sometimes the fresh perceptions of childhood come back to us for a few glorious moments. Sometimes, seemingly for no reason at all, we become sad. Always it is the invisible garden that gives the visible garden its deepest meaning.

One of my garden ornaments, Stone Puppy, was a high school graduation present. Originally I used him as a doorstop in my bedroom. One day Mama figured out that if she asked our rat terrier, Lucy, where Stone Puppy was, Lucy would flip out–she would run to the bedroom and begin to sort of dig frantically at his stony front feet. We could ratchet up the frenzy by picking up Stone Puppy and pretending to caress him, as if he were a real puppy. Lucy didn’t care for that one bit.

Seeing Stone Puppy in the garden makes me happy.