This is where I’ve been the last week or so, while it’s been unseasonably warm.  The garden here is a neglected place.  A rental home garden.  We’ve worked and made and loved and left too many of those to be much bothered with it this time around.  But there was a garden here already, much ignored by previous tenants.  And we scrapped out a few little green spaces of our own, full of plants that I’ve been moving about with me for years on end.  I’ve had some of them for longer then I’ve had children!  My favorite of these spots is but the stone steps, just outside the door; two roses, a pale yellow columbine, several lady’s mantles, and a sizable patch of lavender, with violets, left to grow wild around the edges.  It’s a sweet smelling plot of the old-fashioned flowers that are dearest to my heart (with lilacs just beyond, to complete the vignette).  There are others as well, full of hydrangeas, foxgloves and peonies.  Cone flowers, delphiniums and sedums sprinkled here and there.  And three half-barrels full of herbs.  These are the things that we brought with us and the things that we will take away with us, when someday we leave.  Even these small gardens are a bit over-run, after our busy spring and my summer of not being able to spend much time outside, they’ve been mostly left to fend for themselves.  I’ve been out now though, very belatedly.  Puttering and thinking and shifting things around; digging and weeding and dividing.  Most of the snow is gone now, though I still sometimes come across a patch of it in shady and sheltered spots.  But the weather is shifting again and more will be coming soon.

I potted up a lot of the herbs from the half-barrel gardens, mostly in a set of terracotta strawberry planters that I got at a tag sale a little while back.  Usually I grow nasturtiums and calendula in them.  We had a large one, planted just that way this year, but the others came recently and were empty.  I’ve had a lot of luck in the past, bringing in herbs for the winter, but I’ve never brought in any that had already been under over a foot of snow!  I guess I’ll just have to see how it goes.