Oh No! The Garden! Our Flowers!
That was some storm. Actually I was hoping for a storm to eventuate. Ugh, what a sentence, what a word, how could anyone trifle with the English language like that. Anyway, we enjoy storms. When we hear thunder in the distance we anticipate, with some great pleasure, watching and hearing a storm in progress. And we feel regretful if all we get is the thunder and the rain itself somehow bypasses us. Mind, we've had these pop-up storms all over the place for the past several months, and last week nature really doted on us, pleasuring us with one thunderstorm after another. Even woke us up during the night in her eagerness to please. We don't cower easily, but some of those claps of nature enthralled by her artwork in the night made us jump, enamored though we be of her works, her power, her incredible displays of both.
But today, that was some storm. Yes, we heard the distant thunder overtaking time and space and finally reaching us. And yes, certainly the raindrops began thudding as such storms are wont to do, in pleasuring us, enticing us to race to the windows, the doors, to watch all that precipitation come thundering down, in volumes sufficient to bypass the eaves and just Niagara right from the roof directly to the gardens below. Last week one of the rose arbours came down in a front garden, and that made one wonderful mess. It also affected its next-door neighbour, a clematis in full brilliant bloom whose colours reflected that of this particular clambering rose, causing them to become as one in their mutual admiration and entangling of vinery.
So the gardener's assistant set to the following day to repair the damage, hoisting a ladder to assist him in his noble endeavours. In the process, stepping on one or another innocent flowering plant, leaving me to lament: ach! the begonias! the porculacas! the lilies! the hostas! the dwarf hairy-bearded penstemom! Oh, the pain of it. Desolation was the scene left sadly behind, although the roses didn't look too bad afterward, just all the carnage beneath in the sobbing little border plants and flowering delights.
Well, back to today: that was some thunderstorm. Did I say that already? Have I yet mentioned that this particular storm turned into an ice storm? No? Well, it did. A veritable storm comprised of ice. Well, I've seen hail in my day, most of it itty-bitty bits of ice, and occasionally some quite notable chunks among the little innocent bits. This storm was composed of large deadly chunks of ice, and it went on and on - and - on. Nothing like the gentle refrain say, of a glass harmonica, that instrument of yore, this was a hailstorm of such proportions that its icily orchestral effect against our huge back windows reverberated throughout the house. (Will they hold? Will the windows blow inward? Will they all shatter, spreading glass throughout the house? Will we float away on a sea of ice and rainwater? Ruined! Everything ruined, sob!)
He of the cheerful disposition and head of this household, declaimed "Hey! look at this!" when his humble partner was already glue-eyed to the carnage steadily unfolding and all-too-apparent before her very unbelieving eyes, as the exuberant floral display in our garden pots, our borders, began to change from glory to gory. The plants themselves, under siege as they were, perceptivly altered appearance, shrank into themselves, closed up, and closed ranks as though to offer protection to one another through an appearance of floral solidarity. It was, sadly, to no avail. They got clobbered, pasted, chopped and itty-bitted.
"Hey, come on and look over here!" was the delighted refrain from the assistant gardener who had so conveniently forgotten the earlier carnage from a simple, albeit extremely emphatic storm of a few days earlier. And the dawgs, those very impressionable creatures, unfazed by the clamour above and around us, but excited by the invitation to anarchic triumph in their alpha male's voice, construing it to mean that we had a visitor of some description, began to howl and bark and slaver in anticipation, adding to the general clamour around us. (For they had earlier in the day wagged a reluctant good-bye to visiting family members who dote upon the luckless creatures.) And, I tell you, this went on, and on - and - on.
And when it was over, finally, I ventured, hesitantly, bravely, into the backyard to review the level of restorative work cut out for perhaps the following day. The oldest apple tree and its companion plum tree had been humbled indeed, their long boughs weighted with fruit brought low. The snapdragons in the garden, the marigolds, the dahlias, the cosmos, the pansies and the petunias, the begonias and bees balm, all, all, sadly bedraggled; brave and brilliant colour all but hidden by the worn-out shielding leafage.
It's only the beginning of July. Ample of time for things botanic to recover and return in a sweet vengeance of defiance to regain their place in the world of our secret garden of delight.
posted by Pieface @ Monday, July 03, 2006
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