Surviving underneath

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This is a love letter to herbaceous perennials. Never does my love for them show itself more than March each year. Herbaceous perennials, are, by definition:

  1. a plant whose growth dies down annually but whose roots or other underground parts survive

There is nothing more exciting than venturing out into the garden on one of the first spring days and seeing life again from something that frankly looked deceased over the winter. This truly blew my mind when I first owned a garden. 

Small but distinctive spear-shaped leaves are popping up where my favourite plant, verbena bonariensis (yes, I have a tattoo of this, what of it), is returning. My dear achillea, which bloomed absurdly bright yellow against my Hastings-net-loft-esque black sheds last summer, is producing tufts of gorgeous silver foliage that promise more of those tall, beaming, umbelliferous flowerheads. Not to mention my MANY salvias in containers which I'd cut right down, which all have promising little shoots which will hopefully flower right into the later months of the year again. 

I could go on, but I won't because it's a pandemic and we doomscroll too much that our hands will become phone holster claws, and our brains are already mush, and I don't want to wang on about every single plant in my garden that's coming back to life, that's ridiculous. But they are a little bit poetic and symbolic, particularly right now. 

This week marked a whole year since we first went into lockdown. We've been forced to retreat. We've laid dormant. But underneath we were growing all along, and when we emerge into the light from this third lockdown, whenever it may be, we'll thrive again. 

Right, Alexa, play Destiny's Child Survivor...

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