“A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in - what more could he ask?” Victor Hugo
April is a sensual month. Everything is wakening. Warm breezes caress our skin; birdsong and frog chorus fill our ears; colors return; dandelion greens get eaten; and the perfume of spring blossoms wafts on the gentle winds. Another scent is prevalent, the clean smell of dirt.
When we dig in the ground or the sun and rain beat down upon the soil, the spores of the bacterium streptomyces are released into the air creating ‘geosmin’. The word is from the Greek meaning ‘earth smell’, a pleasant, slightly metallic odor that is perfume to a gardener. It is the scent of healthy soil. In fact, many antibiotics used to fight disease in humans are derived from soil bacteria. Our antibiotic, Streptomycin, is an example. Another term, coined in 1964, ‘petrichor’, is used to describe the smell after a rain, a combination of geosmin, ozone, and plant oils, another delicious and refreshing scent.
Back into the garden with all the senses alert. Staying off the muddy spots, it’s time to check on the garlic which was planted last fall. By early April the shoots are coming up. There are always a few cloves that have been heaved from the ground, still sending down roots. Carefully I push them back in. Next I look for the bachelor buttons that sprouted in the fall. Most will survive and bloom earlier than seed sown this spring. Other seedlings of volunteer poppies, larkspur, nigella, dill, and calendulas are searched for, some to be relocated off the pathways. The rhubarb makes a grand entrance, bright pink leaf coverings and crinkled leaves. All this is being done while serenaded by the birds and frogs and cooled by a sweet breeze.
The wildlife are having a sensual extravaganza. A few years ago, on a morning in mid April, I was cleaning up a bed of Sweet Williams that was full of dead leaves. As I pulled away the debris a copulating pair of wood frogs was uncovered.I apologized (but took a photo) and covered them back up again. They didn’t seem to mind, just continued along with their spring business.
April is the month when I first encounter one of my favorite garden creatures, the red spotted salamander or newt. During their fifteen year life span, these amphibians are born in the water with gills, mature and develop lungs, live on land in their orange juvenile phase for a few years, and then return to the water. While they live on land they are known as red efts, gorgeous with soft orange skin flanked by red, black-rimmed dots. And, as a bonus, they eat slugs. I love to see them trundle through the garden like miniature dinosaurs. It’s best not to handle them as their bodies are soft and their skin is very thin and it secretes a neurotoxin as a defense. But I do pick them up when I find them in the middle of the road.
The newts are a wonderful orange.The complementary color is blue and there are many blue flowers this time of year in my garden, especially from small bulbs. Scilla siberica are the first, with clear, clean cerulean bells. They are prolific seeders and one of my favorite plantings, nestled at the base of a venerable old maple, was the work of nature, not me. Closely related are Chionadoxa forbesii, or glory of the snow, with upward facing pale blue stars and Pushkinia scilloides with powder blue stars (named after botanist Apollo Mussin-Pushkin not the author Alexander Pushkin). The miniature Iris reticulata bloom early in April. Plants just inches tall have flowers almost as big; ‘Alida’, ‘Gordon’, ‘Clairette’, and ‘Harmony’ are all blue cultivars. Many times in the past, these little blue wonders have ignored a late snow, their blueness poking through.
Forget-me-nots, Myosotis sylvatica, have naturalized in my garden so much that they grow next to vegetables, under raspberry canes, in the perennial beds, and at the woods edge. Their blue blooms tie together the whole with a sweetness of color and name.
April. Back to the garden, at last.
“Doing the garden.
Digging the weeds.
Who could ask for more.” Lennon/McCartney
April 2021