A Sonoma County ode to gardening in thespring

Spring comes early in California, and although it is only February, the first uplifting signs are here - signs that capture and carry us in optimism for the growing season ahead. Spring’s special qualities breath renewal and its energies inexorably transform the land around us.

Spring this year is a collaboration of increasing daylight hours, lush green landscapes, the sound of water everywhere, courting birds, bulbs emerging from cold soil and flower buds swelling and expanding into exclamations of color. Spring is not one thing; it is a developing concert of life.

It arrives each year in different forms - sometimes parsimonious, other times opulent and over the top, driven by forces of cold or warmth and rainfall. This year the seemingly endless spring rain has given the landscape a watery essence. Through much of this month it has hidden the neighboring hills and valleys behind curtains of heavy showers, washing color and detail away, revealing only the spare rugged outlines poised in the distance.

When the showers pause, every detail is washed so clean and fresh and shiny new. The fine aspects of glistening trees and rocks and grass and hills express an exquisite yet fleeting beauty, an essence of spring that briefly emerges between showers.

Against verdant grass that seems a solidified wind-whipped green expression of water, oak’s dark, rough twigs sparkle with rain, polished and poised above cloaks of emerald moss and draperies of palest lime-colored lichen swaying and dripping in the breeze. Broken bits of rainbows spear the landscape.

And when the golden afternoon light fills the landscape as soon as the sky clears after rain showers, it changes familiar hues into a magical land.

Everywhere there is water; it ripples over rocks and roads, cascades down creeks mindless of boulders or steep descent. It appears solid and brown in rivers; it pools in meadows; it trickles from great heights down tree trunks to roots long after the rain has stopped. Raindrops sparkle and refract the light; water won’t be contained, and sings lullabies to trees and plants of the summer dry season ahead.

The water doesn’t go away, it goes to work in our land, allowing life to continue for the dry months ahead.

Despite the lingering chill, along the river banks fluffy, nectar-filled blooms of willow lighten the drab thickets, and alder catkins dangle heavily in the breeze - both important early sources of nectar and pollen for foraging pollinators instantly present when the sun comes out.

Pristine clusters of white, waxy bells adorn stiffly posed manzanita shrubs. And the tiny chirps of hummingbirds can be heard as they seek early-blooming flowers. Pollinator-friendly annual wildflowers like lupin and clarkia, meadow foam, California poppies and phacelias blink through the raindrops, beginning a headlong rush into their brief future, with much to attain in leaf and flower and finally seed in the few short months ahead before the soil dries and the heat sets in.

In our gardens, Narcissus have already cast off the darkness of a soil-bound existence and have launched forth heavy flower clusters shrugging off the weather, and hurtling scent about with abandon.

Magnolias range between trepidation and full abandon. Some live recklessly in gorgeous attire easily soiled by frost or rain and wind. Others like ‘Elizabeth’ are shy, the small lemony-white slim blooms dislike cold and shiver in thin coats.

Violets embroider shady corners under flamboyant camellias, and daphne devastates all who pass by. Camellia flowers in vibrant pink, red and white stand duty on somber, glistening shrubs.

Spring is here, and it’s glorious.

New growth on penstemons, centranthus, coreopsis and other perennials beckons us to remove the old, spent, energy-consuming stems and rejuvenate the plants.

Burned slopes turn green and turn their backs to the fire, while others are still bare - naked under the sun and elements - time ticking on renewal, the soil staring at them with hands up in helplessness.

Nurseries are concentrations of spring, and their seductive flowers beckon us inside.

We look through the window at our wet gardens and see and feel it all happening before us, under us, above us and around us, and we wake up earlier and earlier - our hands beckoning to the Earth.

Kate Frey’s column appears every other week in Sonoma Home. Contact Kate at: katebfrey@gmail.com, freygardens.com, Twitter @katebfrey, Instagram @americangardenschool