The Garden of the Seasons: Back to Life

It's hard to illustrate in a photo of a single plant, or colony, however advanced or retrograde that plant's progress is, how the look of things has changed in the overall, everywhere-you-look perspective. 

         Green everywhere, color popping up here and there in various places. The expected ones, the Vinca Minor and the bulbs, but also in the largely forgotten habitues of late May, seen now for a week or two, but then retreating back into masses for the rest of the year. 

              The Japanese primrose (top photo) for instance. Very small, competing for space and earth and nutrients in a level bed overrun in recent years by tall lanky loosestrife. 

           I rush to take its picture now, before the big boys get up, stretch, and stand up straight, leaving the spring bloomer to hide in the shade until another chance next year. This strongly violet colored flower is matched by another plant of what appears to be the same variety of primrose, but blooms a dark pink. Anne sees these blues and pinks matching up on the dance floor of the Kingdom of Plants. 
             Looking to learn something about the primrose, I end up learning about its name. The prim is from "prime," and primrose symbolizes youth because they bloom in the early spring. In Norse mythology the primrose is connected to Freya, the goddess of love.

          Another spring visitor is a plant called Spring Vetch (pictured at left). Its buds open before I can stop shivering in my daily visits to April's versions of spring. It is peaking now . It grows in a place very close to a very big oak tree, a site not many plants attempt. I'm not sure what moved me to place it there in the early years. A lot of trials; a lot of errors.I have the impression that the plant enjoys the lack of competition for space on a site where it, unlike most competitors can manage to bud and blossom and go to seed before the tree overhead fully leafs out and blocks all the sun. It gets its sun when the getting's good.

        According to a very botanically correct website, 

http://www.luontoportti.com/suomi/en/kukkakasvit/spring-vetch

the plant Lathyrus vernus, also named 'Spring Pea,' and 'Spring Vetchling' grows in the form of a perennial herb, up to a height of 8 to 15 inches. Frankly, our two plants are there already. Here's the rest of the site's pretty tart description of its appearance: "Stem erect, bristly, wingless, almost glabrous." Glabrous sends me searching the internet again, where I find this definition:
"the technical term for a lack of hair, down, setae, trichomes or other such covering." OK, done with technical. 

        Vetch is actually quite fetching in its season. Which is now.

         Other perennials, blooming or not, change every day, filling in the space, in a rush to claim all they can claim, making this early May period in one sense the most exciting part of the year. The fast-spreading species, like the Vinca Minor and the wild violets (bottom photo) that flower now, blossom everywhere they've spread too. Or if a plant is alone in the world of the garden -- just one place, one moment -- like this small patch of spring vetch, or the two primroses -- they go all out.

            We'll see the leaves of the violets all year, but only have the violet blossoms for these couple of weeks. They take their opportunity now before larger plants crowd them out, and the trees leaf out to take their lionish share of the sunlight. 
            Daffodils blooming a bright yellow last week have faded this week. Their little clock has chimed all its hours. I always think, I should cut a few and bring them indoors. 
            Some other early blooming perennials shown in these photos are the tulip, grape narcissus (the spiked blue flowers seen in the second and third photos down), the bleeding heart (second to last photo).