When it comes to gardening, I have many dreams. I draw the content of these fantasies from my gardening magazines where people with endless incomes, endless sun, and endless space create breathtaking gardens, or from the flower catalogs that I save and devour with the same intensity and excitement as a child with the Christmas toy ads. I found myself completely suckered into the plant descriptions that raved about the specimens “strong stems, brilliant color, elegant fern shaped foilage, etc… Something I’ve learned over time is that many of the promising and exciting flowers in my catalogs fail to show up at my nurseries. In my early years of gardening I would literally nursery hop trying to find rare but desired plants. Since my lifestyle has more children and complexities than during that stage of life, I have started experimenting with a very dangerous hobby. Ordering plants online! This first picture is a plant I have long coveted, but never seen at my nursery. In the past my self-control has kept me from actually buying much from my catalogs, but when I needed to order a flower for a friend I found myself in kind of a shopping craze and before I knew it I had purchased two Dicentra Gold Heart (bleeding hearts). They arrived today and though small (actually bigger than I expected) they look healthy and seem to already promise to brighten my shady areas and provide their romantic arching stems with delicate pink “bleeding heart” blooms.
Since my dream of an abundance of dispensable flowers is not likely in this decade, my new focus is going to be on enjoying my flowers inside in a very small focused vignette sort of way. This vase is tiny, but perfect to display a couple of my spring daisies. I am amazed at how they brighten up a dull space, and how much more I am aware of appreciate the details of their form in such small numbers. So I will keep dreaming, trying to restrain my mouse from draining my bank account for rare but perfectly needed flowers, and enjoying my cuttings in a miniature sort of way.
