In the Ground at Last!

Months of digging and hauling and raking and hefting bags of compost and finding and assembling the raised beds and today was the day, the Cornus alba Sibrica moved into their forever home.
My heat sank this morning when  I woke to see frost on the grass, but it quickly dissipated. As if the last word of a pointless argument--winter is on its way out!

They don't look like much here, but they are out of their bag and trimmed--I averted my eyes while Angie did the deed..

In place and looking happy --or so I like to think--and watered in. The soil is warm, the raised bed should keep them a bit warmer and reduce the risk of wind rock, so we decide to cover them with fleece at soil level but not the elaborate creations we were preparing. We'll see. The next few days look balmy enough, but the worst winds often wait til March to blow a hoolie.

Angie  appeased my pruning terrors by assuring me the cuttings would live again as new plants.  We'll see.

Skylark Memories

Working hard again at the front bed. A moment leaning on our shovels and my gardening pal heard a lark high above us. It is an amazing sound. We swapped memories--
hers--my mother and I walking across the fields in Belgium to get to a recreation area
mine--hearing an actual lark on Spittal Hill here in Scotland and understanding what Shelley was trying to say. Then as now I thought it would be better to send 16 year olds out on a hill to listen to the world more than sitting in a classroom listening to someone else's idea of it. I still have a low tolerance of English romantic poets, but in fairness to my English teacher of all those years ago and my new garden friend, I offer the last two stanzas of Shelley's Ode:

Better than all measures

Of delightful sound,

Better than all treasures

That in books are found,

Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

Teach me half the gladness

That thy brain must know,

Such harmonious madness

From my lips would flow

The world should listen then, as I am listening now.