Before the mind-blowing photos of the real garden’s tulips (I can’t even begin to wrap my head around the images of them on my camera), I thought I’d show a few photos of our little urban garden. Not too much stirring yet – the few things that we have going are later bloomers. But the little dogwood tree is not so little, and I’d have to say this year it is at its best yet. And with the right cropping, all looks lovely and springlike and beautiful. And isn’t that so very blog-like? A brief snapshot of a moment, cropped and highlighted and (sometimes) edited for viewing. Not dishonest, just selective. Like it says under “welcome”, “a collection of little things:“; the bigger picture is bound to be messier, weedier and most certainly, less finished. Perhaps that’s why I am so drawn to flowers. They operate on a very regular timeline – with slight variations related to weather and movement, they arrive more or less on time with an agenda that is their very own. It doesn’t matter that I may want to look at tulips for four more months – I get a week or two at most, and then the iris come and win over my fickle, fickle heart. I have another year before that sharp intake of breath at the sight of thousands of perfectly formed tulip cups, a full year to forget so the remembering is that much sweeter. Flowers give me a focus, they are right there, and everything else fades into the background.
They provide a delicate contrast to the brick and iron and even rusty chain link.
Tiny purple flowers appear among the ground cover.
They match the not-so-tiny purple flowers of the clover that lives where grass should.
Urban graffiti artists at work on the sidewalks…
…brown paper over works in progress. 