Bellemaison is exceptional this year. As a person who lives in a garden, one might think that a certain resignation, even a jaded entitlement, might set in; but not here. No smugness nor self-satisfaction present. Because veteran gardeners know that some years this just happens.

Today, my morning walk was filled with the scent of blooming syringa. Wild syringa in Bellemaison! There are blessings that Idaho schoolchildren can receive in a lifetime, but living in another state with native syringa blooming the weekend before the 4th of July? That's no blessing, that's an ordination to the Goodlife.

A red Dortmund rose and its partner the pink Dreamweaver, climb high into the native pine trees, with thousands of blooms cascading over, around and up the trunks of these tall, tall pines. The Iceberg hedge, some 40 yards long, is afloat with masses of white blooms with yellow centers. Since my friend, Julia Ellen, told me that no garden is a real garden without lavendar, I dutifully planted another hedge of lavendar right beside the Iceberg hedge. A lotta people have asked, Are ya gonna go with Beemaison instead?

I don't think so. Not yet at least.

The New Dawn climbing rose that I trained to flop over the fence below my bedroom window is a tangled riot of small, porcelain-like pink blossoms; only Madame Nouvelle Aube and I know the secret of the riot: the fattest robin in Bellemaison built a lovely nest atop the fence, nestled deep among the canes and thorns. So we have been co-conspirators in one of the greatest crow scams in Bellemaison's recent history. The baby robins have survived to what? adolescence? and sing 'Sol Omnis' to me every morning. So clever they are.

And the promise remains great: thousands, no millions, of rosebuds; clumps and clumps and clumps of hydrangeas just beginning to open; red, white, blue, yellow, orange, pink, and green--everywhere. Everywhere. And fresh mint tea every morning.

"The bluebird carries the sky on its back." --Thoreau

JBelle

Bellemaison

The 'Kan EWA