Planting gardens that you know you may not witness in their full glory brings a particular kind of pleasure
There is a soundtrack to summer happiness: the dawn chorus, a squadron of swans, wings singing in unison. Sometimes it is found in silence: gardening or sitting or lying together when nothing’s said. Sometimes the thing is in absence.
We plant tulips at our beach plot in Denmark aware we’ll likely miss the flowering. We don’t get there nearly enough: a weekend every six to eight weeks or so. Sometimes the tulips will be tight in bud or the deer will have found them first. Other times, we’ll arrive to see their finished petals, tulip ghosts in the grass.