While the world wasn’t ending today, I took my camera for a walk around the garden. Walking with a camera in my hands makes me slow down and pay attention.
Here in Rhode Island, it’s rained almost every day since the beginning of May. While I’ve been staying dry inside, my garden has been growing more and more lush.
The maple tree has produced more helicopter seeds than I can ever remember. They’re everywhere. On the grass, in the garden, and on coral bell and hosta leaves. 
Nothing is more satisfying than planting and caring for a perennial and seeing your efforts pay off the next year. We put in an old fashioned bleeding heart last year, and this year it came back bigger and stronger and dripping with flowers.
Our old neighbor was a master gardener. When she moved away and our new neighbors rebuilt their porch, we were the lucky recipients of a mature rhododendron growing where the new steps would go. The builder dug up the bush, wrapped its root ball in burlap, and brought it over to our house. We planted it without really remembering what sort of flowers it had. Turns out they’re pink with pretty black spots, like the sort of thing you might have seen on a hat at the royal wedding.
You can’t really appreciate an iris until you see it up close. So close it no longer looks like a flower. How can pollinators resist?
Every year I think about how much I hate the spirea beside the front steps. It’s messy and sprawling, and it’s taking up prime real estate — the sunny spot by the front door, the first plant visitors see when they come to our house. And then mid-May comes around, delicate white flowers cover the spirea, and I forget all my florocidal intentions.
The ferns are another problem. There are just so many of them. When they die off in the fall, they’re messy and ugly. And yet, how can I resist their primeval luxuriance?
I’m glad the rain finally ended. And I’m very glad the world didn’t.
Giving Up The Ghost