Photo: Seedling © Archana Bhartia | Dreamstime.com

I wish I could describe the fine quality of the rain that is descending now where I live.  It is like mist, except with a gravitational pull.  It is rain but seemingly not made of raindrops.  On the puddles, by the time the water lands, it is in fact droplets, but in the air, the rain is like the softest texture imaginable.  No, that’s not right, because there are softer textures, finer textures, like silken rice flour, or a baby’s cheek.  But this rain, this mist pouring down, in May, is unlike any of the other rains I’ve witnessed on the Cape.

My life here ebbs and flows.  It puddles, as I ready to enter the homestretch with the final copyedits of my book.  I wonder why I made the choices I did, I wonder how it is I got here, but then, there is the rain.  The horses must be inside.  A friend is gathering dirt for her garden beds.  Soon, it will be Memorial Day and time to plant.  All week, if the rain mist lets up, it is time to plant, after the new moon Sunday.  There, the sky is already brightening.  My cosmos in their egg crate cups are spindling towards the hidden sun, ready to anchor.

Does thinking you can do a handstand count?

2012, Indira Ganesan, first iceland poppy bloom

Galium odoratum – lievevrouwebedstro (Photo credit: AnneTanne)

Green is never so bright as it is in spring, during rain.  It rained like England today, the way it’s barely visible but pouring, lets you can wander happy among the new plants.

I got everything in last week: lavender, lemon thyme, strawberries, hostas, columbines, sweet woodruff, dicentra, poppy, ranunculus, creeping phlox.  Only the cilantro and basil await, and all the annuals from seed.  Here I advise anyone who loves to garden to immediately go to Dan Pearson or Nigel Slater.  They will captivate with lush pictures and solid tales of growth.

I just planted, having amended the soil with compost, but not topsoil.  Hopefully, the rental association will give us mulch and gravel (for paths.)  Though I am only here for another twenty-eight months, I’d like to plant a trio of roses (this morning I thought six) even as I hear my mother shake her head and advise, annuals, from the supermarket, because if they can survive there, then anywhere.  The daughter of thrifty parents with longings for the world of plant luxe, the heady catalogs of White Flower Farm, Logee’s, Landreth’s.

Something is chirping.  Is it a frog–one of those tree peepers? Or a sparrow baby,lost?  Such a disconsolate sound.  The supermoon has past.  He’s quieted now, peeper or bird.  Roses, blooms, buds of spring.