Glaciers Have Retreated.

5-18-08 VERMONT: As wet as it has been in the NY Metro area is how dry it has been here, even after all the record breaking snow. We had a sprinkle last night and some rain this afternoon, and we’re grateful for every drop. I left here a month ago with the house and gardens under a glacier, but there was not one cube’s worth of ice left when I arrived yesterday. When I left snow drops were opening, and now there is a long list of flowers to mention. The lawn has already been mowed.

I have been busy since I arrived with clean up, pruning winter kill and snow plow trauma, stone wall repairs, setting up the flower bed guards and dodging black flies. I did most of the flower bed clean up in the fall so it was fairly easy now. I saw a male ruby throated hummingbird twice today. He was working on pulmonaria and mertensia by the porch.

The night before I came up, Judy and I heard ‘La Fille du Régiment’ at the Met. Natalie Dessay is a great comic and a ball of energy in addition to singing pretty well. Juan Diego Florez got a huge and prolonged ovation for his big number, but apparently not enough to induce an encore. See anything with Natalie Dessay in it.

In bloom: daffodil, mertensia, jack-in-the-pulpit, epimedium, violets, red and white trillium, pink and white bleeding heart, pulmonaria, forget-me-not, vinca minor, dandelion, ajuga, alkanet, primula, packasandra, hellebore, wild strawberry, jill-over-the-ground, forsythia, blueberry, elderberry, judd viburnum, serviceberry, star magnolia, apple, willow.