The Japanese maple is making a comeback, which pleases me. It did not really seem like a goner, but I was not sure if it would send off new leaves this year or just take the summer off. The tree had been blasted pretty hard by the late frost, which in reality was not so much late as it was preceded by an unseasonably warm spell. So the Japanese maple, like so many other things, came out earlier than it would have otherwise, offering tender leaves to Jack Frost’s final salad of the year. The new leaves’ scarlet hue contrasts with the deep crimson of the frostbitten, giving the effect of being two different plants.
The new growth also ensures that there is a scrim between the porch and the street, which is important if one is sitting on the porch on a rainy Sunday afternoon. Were this the fall, it would be a perfect day to watch a football game. Not being that season, it’s probably more fun to sit and watch the garden grow as it is nourished by the precipitation. In college, in the summers, I would work for the school during the day and watch the rain fall in the evening. It fell every evening back then, as if we lived in Hawaii. That’s the summer during which I first listened to John Coltrane, and a summer rain shower always provokes me to play “My Favorite Things.”
Of which peonie roses are quickly becoming one. Their lustrous blooms are more in harmony with the other plants in the garden than a monarchical America Beauty could ever hope to be. That is neither to underestimate or denigrate the beauty of the peonie rose. It is more testament to the fact that, like a great chorister, the peonie rose gains greater esteem by blending its beauty with the other members of its cohort. Not so with the butterfly bush, extending itself toward the sky with great rapidity. This bush, it seems, assumes that fecundity is the key to avoiding the pruning shears. As with much in life, what we do to avoid what we fear most is often that which results in its manifestation.