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After all of the planning, all of the prevaricating, all the frustrating days of hurry-up-and-wait, and all the frantic preparation of April, there’s something almost unbearable about May’s perfection. Morning after morning, I wake up to find the smell of apple blossom—the single best scent of the year—hanging in the yard, the fire of tulips stark against dark earth, the grass greening and the songbirds in full-throated chorus. Daffodils are just going over, yolk-yellow or paper white over green, and everywhere else the next phase is gathering to burst: salvias, peonies, then June’s flush of roses in white and purple, then the clematis will be scrambling over gates and arches, then Russian Sage nodding silver and purple at the beginning of July, then Black-Eyed Susans, coneflowers, bee balm, and finally the wine-red sedum of August, and the asters’ hanging stars before the frost comes on.
It’s such a keen season of anticipation that you could easily let what’s next distract you from what’s here—if the present moment wasn’t so full of color, so perfectly balanced between cool mornings of dappled light and long afternoons of warm sun on the nape of your neck. New England has quite a short growing season, but this is a feature rather than a bug: the discipline of the waiting is equalled only by the intensity of the fulfillment, as the blossoms which would be spread over weeks or months further south explode in unison up here. Walking through the school’s orchard or swishing a Saturday evening finger of whisky in a glass as I potter around my own yard, I’m aware of time’s passing like a liquid whose pressure flows around my legs, aware of my place in it and of the bittersweet keenness of the instant. It’s a pleasure you have to be quiet and vigilant to enjoy, whose goodness is linked to its passing away.
For all that, there are still plenty of practical tasks to accomplish. Here are a few worth looking into:
1/ Dead-Head Daffodils and Tulips
No burst of color quite equals the fireworks of daffodils and tulips in April and May. Given balanced rain and sun and relatively cool weather, their displays can carry on for several weeks but, inevitably, they will be going over by the middle of this month. Daffodils can and will naturalize—that is, spread and multiply through your borders and your grass, but tulips won’t do so. If you’re hoping for more of the former, you can leave the swelling seed-heads on the stem. Otherwise, you can give them the same treatment as the tulips, which want to have those vestigial seed heads trimmed off so they can focus on putting nutrients into the bulb for next year. Especially with tulips, this process is vital, since failing to do so will shorten the flowering life of the plant. It also helps keep them looking tidy as they fade. Whatever you do, don’t cut down the leaves of daffodils or tulips until they’ve gone brown. Doing so will starve the bulb and ruin your chances of next flowers next spring.
2/ Mulch and Feed Clematis
Type one Clematis plants, the earliest of the year to flower, are just about ready to bloom. These will blossom on last year’s wood, unlike types two and three, which mostly flower on new growth. No matter which of these you grow, now is a great time to mulch them with compost and give them plenty of water. Being forest plants, clematis famously like shade around their feet and sun around their heads, so don’t be afraid to put some broken crockery or even leaves around the base of your plants. Adding compost or liquid seaweed feed will be best of all, so that the long displays of these queens of the climbing flower can have steady blooms for as long as possible.
3/ Look for Volunteers
Last year’s punishing northeastern drought meant that it was more or less impossible for us to grow lettuce or herbs after about June. Our rain barrel was empty, the water ban was universal, and all our greens went to seed within weeks of going in the ground. Around August, I started having to go to the store to buy parsley, an experience I typically only have between the months of January and March. It was a depressing end to the summer. But the unintended boon of all that seed spreading around is the number of volunteers in the herb garden this spring. I’ve already found four specimens of dill, twelve cilantros, three oreganos, and any number of lettuces, moving them into neat rows and watering them in by way of welcome to their new situation. As you put tender plants into your garden this month and begin to weed around their feet, keep an eye out for welcome plants as well as unwelcome ones. It can save you a fortune at the garden store, not to mention yielding plants that are far hardier, since they’ve grown up in precisely your garden’s conditions.
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Perfectly true :)