April fools us sometimes

T.S. Eliot contended in The Wasteland that April is the cruelest month. He knew what he was talking about even though he was across the Atlantic from our more challenging meteorological mood swings here in Maryland. Tantalizingly warm one day, cruel frost the next, which makes hardening off plants a bit of a hort-test. The little greenhouse was getting crowded with tomatoes and peppers and herbs so I had taken out the hollyhocks (Alcea ‘Nigra’ and Alcea ‘Cabernet’), a promisingly purple-black bloom and wine-dark red I intend to frame against a south-facing white wall. They needed to be planted anyway and I had the encouragement of a volunteer hollyhock that’s up about 6 inches beside the greenhouse foundation. The plants are going into the garden between office and kitchen along with some cerulean blue sweet peas (Clitoria) that I assumed had the same kind of stamina. But after two chilly nights in a protected spot beside the hollyhock flats the poor Clitoria, whose seed I got from Thompson Morgan, was looking like it had made a trek across the frozen tundra. It’s not been touched by frost. Even so, the edges of its top leaves are threatening yellow; others are pale green and limp. Not happy. We'll see. I hope to stick half of them in the ground this afternoon in front of the hollyhocks, say a little benediction (as I do for all the plants when they make a transition from one place to another) and hope for the best.

I appreciate the change of seasons, but this spring, chilly and grey and only desultorily trying to make up for our current 4-inch shortfall in annual rain, is a bit depressing. A bright spot is the Klehm’s Song Sparrow Nursery Magnolia, that for the first time since I planted it two years ago on the east side of the outbuilding is opening creamy yellow blooms that offer up a lilting fragrance. A hopeful sign that if winter comes, true spring can’t be THAT far behind. This ain’t Russia after all.