Lovers’ Moon

“It is the month of June,

The month of leaves and roses,

When pleasant sights salute the eyes

And pleasant scents the noses.”

— Nathaniel Parker Willis, “The Month of June”

The dazzle of roses and headiness of new marriages tell us June is for lovers. The mad rush of early spring planting and making divisions has given way to more modest maintenance chores. Now that transplants are set and beans are coming up, weeding, watering and feeding take up the slack.

June offers time for dreaming and contemplating the beauty around us. I admire our tall thorny-stemmed rose, Mrs. Grootenhorst, that has reigned for 30 years, reliably pushing out small pink blooms. I’ve put in a tough, red Knock Out landscape rose in a place of prominence at the heart of the garden. I left the gate ajar and a doe went directly for it, but it is reviving nicely with plump buds. In the language of roses, pink is for simplicity and happy love, and red is for passion and desire. Someday, I’ll try a white, or moon, garden. White is for purity and innocence.

Now, the closet of light fully opens, and we can see that all fairies, elves and sylphs have gone abroad. Brides don white as colors rustle all about in blooming attendance. Rosemary sprays for remembrance and orange blossoms for purity sweeten their bouquets, and all is right with the world.

I’m fond of the clove-scented pinks and don’t resist adding a few of these fringed diminutive beauties. Heirloom Sweet William biennials, Dianthus barbatus Nigrescens, offer spicy fragrance and velvety deep-red petals. Foliage champions, coral-bells, or Heuchera, come in green, purple, red, yellow, bronze, copper, silver, fringed and variegated selections. I planted Stoplight, with a red-veined yellow leaf with a light green edge, next to Extreme Purple, with dark shiny leaves for contrast. I rescued a coneflower, Echinacea White Swan, and a red and yellow Aquilegia canadensis, natives from an abandoned garden. I found a doe-chewed hosta, which has since leafed into gorgeous soft green and pale yellow.

A wattle of last year’s stiff goldenrod stalks supports climbing tendrils of snap peas. In the clamor for space, I’ll guide squash vines upward onto twine supports. I file my hoe blade and trim weed roots just below the surface. Carrots and beets respond best to judicious thinning and cultivation. I pinch tomatoes to no more than three leaders. I’ll let our second year asparagus run its ferny sprays, permitting its roots to fatten.

Something wild is stirring in the garden. Irises are growing beards in a riot of coffee, purple, white and yellow. At rough perimeter of high grass a bobcat pads across lawn. A rare encounter, our senses do a double-take in silent awe. Nature reminds us she is wild at heart, as are her burgeoning blades and spears. Bees linger, clinging to velcro-like cells at the lips of flower petals.

I undercut masses of forsythia, revealing stonewall. I’ll leave strong upright stems to form leafy umbrellas and under-plant them with trumpet lilies for a late august concert of exotic opiate scent.

Radiance in harness fairly gallops through the month to the pinnacle of the solstice. As our hemisphere tilts toward the sun, the longest day cycles by. Summer arrives. It’s time to stake the gladiolas.