April air around the Medicinal Herb Garden and Botany Greenhouse is rich with the scent of cottonwoods (Populus spp.) whose fragrant, sticky buds smell like beeswax infused with jasmine flowers. On these warming days, the hum of bees, the bird songs, the brilliant green of new foliage and the sudden opening of flowers all make for dreamy times. It’s hard not to contemplate the possibility of putting down the tools and going for a long, long journey. Spring has that effect on some of us.
A couple weeks ago, when many honeybees in the area were swarming and lighting out for the territory to find new homes, some of the UW Beekeepers’ bees got into the act. Losing your bees can be a blow, but after a small swarm of ours left, a swarm from somewhere else arrived to take their place. It doesn’t always happen like this but sometimes the stars are aligned. Evan Sugden, entomologist, beekeeper and teacher of the UW scientific beekeeping classes, has the calm demeanor we expect of beekeepers. He seemed unsurprised that the bees had swarmed away and unsurprised that a new swarm had arrived. Usually only about half of the colony leaves with the old queen and the remaining bees produce a new queen, so, while swarming is not ideal, neither is it the end of the world. Bees leave because they’re feeling overcrowded. May they find the space they need.
Swarm of new bees waiting patiently on the side of an occupied hive. They didn’t have to wait long for Evan to coax them into an empty hive, their new home. Hopefully, the bees that left here in a swarm have found a good home.
In spring the energy rises up and suddenly takes flight, like a tornado, to do what it has to do, create or destroy or just move on, or all of the above. Seems like that’s pretty much life in a nutshell.
In March and April I take stock of the winter’s wreckage in the garden, often unnoticeable, without looking closely, until plants fail to produce new growth. In addition to seeds recently gathered in trade and the usual annuals and biennials, I start more seeds of plants that didn’t make it through the winter. In the natural world, seeds dropped by plants each year would form a seed bank that would germinate over time, maybe after a disturbance like a wildfire or a landslide, a flood or an animal digging in the soil. But in a public garden, it’s up to the gardener to keep the beds filled with plants, otherwise it starts to look shabby.
Seed flats, potted seedlings, tropical perennials etc. awaiting the proper time for resettlement in the Medicinal Herb Garden.
The far end of the growing bench. Growing plants is a pleasure, an obsession and sometimes an addiction, though a fairly benign one (so far…I think). Last week, I collected seeds of fragrant, spiny Ceanothus fendleri in the Chiricahua Mountains and I will grow them if I can. I also collected seeds from a species of Vitex (not a species I’m familiar with) growing in a planter outside a coffee house in Bisbee, Arizona. Why? Because they were there! Look for both in the garden, this year or next.
That’s one reason I go to the mountains. I’ve never seen a garden designed and created by a human that can rival the random perfection of a subalpine meadow in the Cascades or Olympics, certainly not a formal arrangement like the Medicinal Herb Garden with its wooden borders and gravel pathways. If I had permission, I’d rip the whole thing out and start over with a more natural setting, following some basic patterns of the natural world.
Still, the same forces are at work, even in the most domesticated landscape: birth, death, entropy, all leading to another season of renewal in spring. This is a good time to visit the garden. Look closely and you’ll see the sun’s energy, stored from last year in roots and branches, as it transforms into new growth, rising up to draw sustenance from this year’s rays and nutrients from past autumns’ decayed leaves; the cycle continues, on and on and on.
Last year it appeared that the blue herons had abandoned their rookery but they’re back. Before the leaves fill in the deciduous trees, wander over to the woods north of the giant sequoia in section D and look up. You’ll probably hear them before you see them, but their nests are hard to miss. Let’s hope they can fend off the eagles without the loss of too many chicks this year. The first awkward flight of the fledgelings is a nail biter, as the crows and seagulls try to force them down to the ground. It’s not for the faint of heart but it’s pretty exciting when they make it back to the nest.
tumult of springtime
whirlwind spinning life and death
tightly into one
See you in the garden.
Yep, it’s Spring……bursting with life and making the allergic among us rather miserable……Grateful that I am not. Keith, as always, I enjoy your posts.