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Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Spring's First Green is Gold


One of my friends loves to quote Robert Frost at this time of year. She usually recites this poem:

Nothing Gold Can Stay
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

-- Robert Frost



There's something about Frost.....his pictures are fantastic. The meter wonderful, and all that he speaks of we've thought, but not so eloquently.

My garden is bounding. We've had a long spring, but suddenly, warm weather has hit. Several days of weather approaching 90F has meant that most of my daffodils, except for the late ones, have gone by. The fleeting gold of the trees is leaving for green. But it is lush, and burgeoning.

Daily I take a turn in my garden. Above you can see the new leaves on my weeping Katsura. I love to see it change colors. Hopefully, since this is the beginning of the 4th year it has been in, it will take off like gangbusters.

Weeping trees and trees of gold in spring usually bring Weeping willows to mind. Here's one three weeks ago on a farm not too far from here.

The nursery man who works at the Garden Center around the corner from me keeps on trying to get me to buy some other weeping trees, such as weeping red bud. I resist.

I have a weeping Katsura, a weeping crab apple and a weeping Norway Spruce. Any more weeping things and I think it would be the dubbed the "Garden of Monstrosities."

1 comment:

Shady Character said...

What a great title! I've always loved that line and it goes through my head often this time of year. Right now the Norway maples are dropping massed of golden-green flowers all over the place. It's almost, but not quite enough, to make me forgive them for being such nasty trees otherwise :)

I agree with your decision to resist more weeping trees. Outside of a horticultural collection too many of such things can look strange. (I won't say monstrous.) But just one or a few with some back-up, plainer plants can really pop.