Happy Easter to all of you who celebrate the holiday, and to everybody else, I wish you a green and flowering spring and much else to be grateful for.

Here it's afternoon of our holiday, clear, warm, even hot, and dry for the time of year. Late winter and early to mid-spring are normally wet, but this year we've had very little rain for some months now. The ground is cracked, and DH has been watering the plants put in the ground last fall and winter, to help them through their first year. Even so nature is green and lush, the grass high, even the late trees leafing out. The wisteria on the pergola in front of the house is in full bloom, filled with buzzing bumblebees, and drenching the air in its fragrance. I suffer every winter cutting back the wisteria, a monstrous job, but the overwhelming spring flowering and green roof every summer make it worth the trouble.

The roses are starting to bloom, 'Archduke Joseph', now a rampant climber, 'Etoile de Lyon', 'Jaune Desprez', 'Sanguinea', 'Clementina Carbonieri' (of commerce), 'Noella Nabonnand'; all of them mature, most of them huge. 'Mrs. B.R. Cant' is another Tea that has taken well to climbing and is now begining to flower on the pergola we built two or three years ago on the terrace of the second house, in company with 'Mme. Alfred Carriere' and 'Duchesse d'Auerstaedt', which hasn't yet begun to bloom.

Shade is important to us; so is green. Our house, a three-story masonry heat sink, faces south on a steep slope, staring straight into the sun. The wisteria pergola was one of our first projects, planned in considerable part for shade. The rose pergola on the terrace, same. The young bay laurel in front of the paved terrace of the second house in twenty years has gotten helpfully huge, but we need more protection. It was in the fall of 2017, that dreadful year, that we planted the double line of trees and shrubs going down from the house to the shade garden, after the misery of walking down and up in the sun with watering cans. The walk was less than a minute, but I felt it. Last fall we took down our clothesline in the front yard, transferring it to the front of the porch of the second house where the paved terrace is, a usefully blazing spot for drying clothes, and planted two laburnums and a Burkwood viburnum in its place. The front yard was too hot to be in: I needed shade. If we're able to do so, this fall I want to finish planting the entire Allee, house to paved road. It's partially planted now, mainly with Italian cypresses and roses, but many more trees, shrubs, and subshrubs are needed. We'll see: it's a major task.

I think the growing heat and drought we're seeing here are occurring in many parts of the world. I hope our plants can cool our own place down and allow us to move comfortably around on our own land in hot weather. This isn't an exaggeration. In summer I go months without ever setting foot in the big garden, because it's simply too hot to visit. That isn't the only benefit of planting trees and shrubs, and the others also matter to me.

Cath has just suggested that I might be able to grow lilies, the wonderful kind; and I can think of quite a likely place for them. Another project to add to the thousands that bed down in my brain. Also I had an idea today about the paved terrace. DH and I were cleaning out the part under the rose pergola, just for prettiness, sweeping dead leaves and pulling weeds. The ground of the terrace has slumped and shifted over the years, leaving cracks between the irregularly shaped, concreted flagstones, and weeds sprout there. I was wondering, if I sowed some thyme seeds in the cracks and watered them, whether they might not grow? This is the kind of plant I can't have in the ground, as our land is all clay densely covered with weeds and grass, or woodland, but perhaps this stony environment might suit thyme as it suits the weeds. Also, DH has made a hole in the terrace beside the pergola, where we want to plant a second columnar oak. The first one we planted a year or two ago is thriving, and a second one would give the right amount of shade, structure, and coherence. We're still looking for the oak, or at least, waiting until conditions allow us to go looking for it. But I was thinking--DH hasn't heard about this yet--if we could take up a line of the flagstones along the inner side of the pergola and have a narrow raised bed? That area would be quite sunny, and the ground below the paving is all rocks, construction debris, and organic matter. Thyme would love it. So would pinks, which I adore and have no place to grow. And lavender, especially L. lanata. Gardening never ends.