Anticipation is one of the great pleasures of gardening. You plant, water, feed, weed and hover. You watch the little plant grow under your care. One day — it has buds! Already a reward for your efforts. Watching them swell, and develop colour, and begin to open — I find this almost better than the period of full bloom. It’s like the excitement you feel before going on a vacation; experiences yet-to-be-experienced are perfect and unbroken, without disappointments and, of course, the inevitable aftermath (returning to home and work, or fading and deadheading).

So far this spring, quite a few plants have budded, bloomed and faded already in my garden. Some, such as snowdrops, crocuses and tulips, are now dormant. Lilacs, fragrant and beautiful just a few weeks ago, are now entering the ugly brown stage and becoming an item for the Unpleasant Things To Do list, because clipping off the faded blooms is a tedious job done from a ladder.

But there are buds, hundreds of them, maybe thousands, such as those on this extremely tough, dependable rose growing into a Norway maple. (You can see a bit of a browned-off lilac bloom on the left).

Clematis “Pink Fantasy” has lots of promising buds this year.

Nearby are delphiniums and snapdragons, both in bud, with pink snapdragons already blooming in the background.

I like lamb’s ears (Stachys byzantia) best just before they bloom. They start to look tired once a few of the small flowers fade, although they do go on blooming for weeks, and the bees love them. Right now they are exquisitely velvety.

Mulleins do a great job preparing to bloom. You just know something big is coming, like the long crescendo in Respihghi’s “The Pines of the Appian Way,” a great buildup to a magnificent flourish. They also bloom a long time and are popular with bees.

 

Rose campion, Lychnis coronaria, is indecently happy in this garden. Here is one of many plants, developing dozens of buds that will soon be magenta or white flowers, next to an already blooming Dutch iris. (Note the wire fences around the perennial beds, and the rather large dead patch in the lawn — both due to the presence of Nelly the Newf, the canine member of the household).

Finally, some actual blooms…

And now, back to bee-watching.