Die zarten Knospen des Mai

What would May Day be without a little Maiwein? Unfortunately, my schemes of creating a sustainable harvest of sweet woodruff have not come to fruition. Last year's experimental seedling seem to have been done in by a dry autumn. But I refuse to give up hope. There's plenty of free space in our little garden plot, too shady to grow much else and easily irrigated. So we returned from Gethsemane yesterday with two little princesses-of-the-woods already in bloom.

That wasn't our plan at all. It was supposed to be a stormy day, and we looked forward to staying in and catching up on our NetFlix queue. But when he saw how mild and sunny it was, monshu announced he was making his usual trek to Andersonville for smokes. His other errand was picking up some cat-friendly, shade-loving plants for the house. Sadly, to me this means a bittersweet return to the mediocrities of my youth: spider plants, snake plants, and aspidistra. The Beast has already discovered the spider plant and it's pretty clear that it will need a hanging pot in order to survive long.

Our one new garden plant this year is fennel, since we seem to be using an awful lot of it. I also replaced the verbena and the mint, neither of which survived the winter, and likewise the lemon thyme. Except now I'm not so sure: is it back from the dead or not? After all, I was wrong about the autumn-blooming clematis--it looked done for, but apparently its habit is to lose all of its more fragile growth and then nonchalantly rebud from the woody parts of its stems.

And I was really wrong about the ninebark. We had given up on it and were reconciled to cutting it apart and tossing it out while we considered replacing a great deal of the soil around it. But as Scooter was reseeding yesterday, he noted that what I had thought was brown dessicated foliage from last fall was really maroon red new growth. It's not exactly in rude health, but I haven't the heart to trash it without first giving it another chance.

So right now the garden plot is on hold until I see what's really coming back. The sorrel, as I may have mentioned, is thriving in this weather. Yesterday I finally got around to harvesting it. We were not lied to about how tasty a soup it makes, though I'd like to experiment with reducing the cream, ramping up the herb, and perhaps replacing the chicken stock with vegetable.