Bookish Gardener

Today is fantastic Friday

The sign in the first-grade classroom reads: "Today is fantastic Friday."

My seven-year-old tugs at my sleeve and asks, "Eight o'clock tonight, right?"

It's our new Friday night routine: me and our new little Whovian watch the revived Doctor Who (the "first" season, which originally aired last year in the UK), with Christopher Eccleston as the Doctor—thrilling, smokin' hot, and, (as this Doctor would say,) Fantastic!

We're already more than halfway through this incarnation of the Doctor, whose 13-episode lifespan will turn out to be shorter than that of a Firefly.

In the episode "Rose," an obsessed amateur who's been investigating and tracking the Doctor shows Rose (the Doctor's companion in this series) photos with evidence of the Doctor's time-travelling appearances in pivotal scenes in history: the JFK assassination, the launch of the Titanic, the eruption of Krakatoa. If he had dug deeper, he might have also unearthed evidence of the Doctor's influence in the history of popular music:

If you wanna feel groovy, give the Doctor a call:


Called the Doctor, woke him up:



Doctor! Doctor! Can't you see I'm burnin', burnin':

Doctor, Doctor, gave me the news:


I got a bad case of lovin' [Who].

Spring in my step

With the flip of a switch, spring has arrived. We cut the winter garden to the ground two Saturdays before last, and not a moment too soon. Within days temperatures jumped to preternatural levels (shorts, if not swimsuit weather), and the early warmth and steady rains have accelerated and compressed the comings and goings of the spring flowers.

The list of things to be done is endless, of course, but what I like to do in the garden these days is just wander around and around. I can't see the same new bud or bloom too many times. It's as if I were holding the face of a prodigal, long-lost loved one, and saying, with great melodrama: It's you; It's really you. The thickening carpet of Scilla siberica, the blue of the squills shown off to its best not in sun but in deep shade, against a wall of deep green yew hedge; Helleborus foetidus, ready to bloom for the first time in my garden (hurray!), drooping with a dozen pendulous pasteled chartreuse berry-like buds; the Best Astilbe Ever, valuable 365 days a year, already a foot tall with fresh bronze elegant foliage, in the sump garden (a/k/a, alas, The Weed Farm); the actually compact euonymus 'Rudy Haag', hinting at autumn with thin racing stripes of burning-bush red up through its stems and its emerging leaf buds; and David Austin's Redouté, which rocks, waking up from its unprotected winter with new growth already two-thirds the way up its tallest stem.

I've resisted keeping Jeffersonian records of the day-to-day history of plants in my garden, seeing as it would put me over the guilt-trip baggage limit of things that I am continually failing to maintain to perfectionist excess. But...I'm going to try keeping note in the sidebar of the coming blooms, dividing the month into decanates ("E" for early, days 1-10, "M" for mid, days 11-20, and "L" for late, days 21-month's end). I may miss a date here or there, or confuse a cultivar or two, but it'll be okay...right?

Love sweetens every sorrow

Today, anniversary 15; this weekend, The Magic Flute.

Pamina
Bei Männern, welche Liebe fühlen,
Fehlt auch ein gutes Herze nicht.

Papageno
Die süßen Triebe mit zu fühlen,
Ist dann der Weiber erste Pflicht.

Beyde
Wir wollen uns der Liebe freun,
Wir leben durch die Lieb allein.

Pamina
Die Lieb versüßet jede Plage,
Ihr opfert jede Kreatur.

Papageno
Sie würzet unsre Lebenstage,
Sie wirkt im Kreise der Natur.

Beyde
Ihr hoher Zweck zeigt deutlich an,
Nichts edlers sei, als Weib und Mann.
Mann und Weib, und Weib und Mann,
Reichen an die Göttheit an.
An die Göttheit an, an die Göttheit an.

(English translation here; scroll down to "No. 7 Duet".)

Early spring's bulbs

Photo credit: Jessamyn Roll

From top left, anti-clockwise, Crocus tomasianus and Iris reticulata 'Pixie', 'Harmony' and 'Cantab', which opened day by day in the gravel garden in this sequence, starting about ten days ago, in an arc of violet—purple—royal blue—flax blue. (They were briefly kept company by Puschkinia scilloides var. libanotica until the latter was served up for lagomorph hors d'oeuvres.)

At day's end these days, the light is golden amber, calming the mood and elevating the spirit. Yesterday, the first daffodils began to bloom.