There’s gold coming in them there gardens — briefly

The confluence of Poetry Month and spring brought to mind this Robert Frost poem:

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

The gold that comes to mind cannot be bought nor collected. It’s springtime’s offering of golden blooms found in the garden. As in the poem, none last for long but serve to cheer us with hope of more color to come.

The earliest gold for me is the forsythia I clipped from my shrubs to bring in to force ahead of time. The future yellow daffodil buds are swelling not only here in my plots, but all over town. It seems that every homestead must have a cluster of them.

My Cornelian cherry tree has miniature puffballs of yellow in April but soon are gone to make way for the berries to follow. In my semi-shaded bed to the south are two kerri japonicas which will bloom closer to Mother’s Day in golden puffy orbs. The shrubs are only about 3 feet tall with graceful arched stems to carry its gold.

Other bulbs which may bring early gold to the garden are tulips and allium moly. A greenish gold comes in late spring with lady’s mantle, Alchemilla mollis.

A rare early golden flower which I am privileged to own is Trillium luteum. Not only are the blooms unusual, but the leaves are spotted.

More gold will appear later in the growing season in the form of daylilies, evening primroses, iris and coreopsis.

Keep a sharp eye out for the gold in the landscape as spring’s offering is ephemeral.