“A delicate fabric of bird song
Floats in the air,
The smell of wet wild earth
Is everywhere.
Oh I must pass nothing by
Without loving it much,
The raindrop try with my lips,
The grass with my touch;
For how can I be sure
I shall see again
The world on the first of May
Shining after the rain?”
~ Sara Teasdale (American poet; 1884 – 1933)
Gladly shared by Betty Hanselman
Gardener’s wife (& spring-rain walker)
Our garden investment has blessed me in so many ways, some I never imagined! Like today…our garden is lit up with bright spring sunshine!
I look outside and see the sunshine sparkling on the glossy leaves of the Southern Magnolias just outside my office window. I gaze across at the play of light on the newly-opened, fresh green leaves of an ornamental tree against the darker green of evergreen Cryptomerias. And I know that when I step onto the sun-warmed patio in just a few moments, my heart will swell with the intensity of backlit sunshine through the intricate, brilliantly chartreuse leaves of a Pine Bark Japanese Maple.
Who knew the intricacies of sunlight in our garden could bring such joy to my heart?
What about you? What garden discoveries are lighting up your life this spring?
Gladly shared by Betty Hanselman
Gardener’s wife
“The hope in a gardener’s heart is strengthened every year by the experience of watching green settle in a filmy veil over bare branches, watching a bare, raked plot of ground suddenly explode with busy, purposeful growth.
Hope is nurtured every time a pruned-back bush sends forth invigorated shoots, every time a languishing bush flourishes in a new location . . . . Hope is nurtured just by being in the company of trees and plants and flowers, by witnessing the relentless strength and energy of growing things.”
~ Emilie Barnes (Contemporary gardener and author in Time Began in a Garden)
Wishing you hope and joy in the experience of green, growing things during this beautiful season of the year!
“There are no days in the whole round year more delicious than those which often come to us in the latter half of April… The sun trembles in his own soft rays… The grass in the meadow seems all to have grown green since yesterday… though there is warmth enough for a sense of luxury, there is coolness enough for exertion.”
~Thomas Wentworth Higginson (American minister, author, abolitionist, and soldier; 1823 – 1911)
Gardener’s wife
For many years, the team at Hanselman Landscape have been shaping and nurturing a variety of specialty pines at our nursery in Manheim, Pennsylvania. Now, these distinguished pines are gracing residential and commercial gardens around the country–from Austin, Texas to Long Island, New York, and even at the renowned Ring Stone Sculpture in front of the Sloan School of Management at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Most recently, our team delivered two specimen Japanese Black Pines to the Japanese-owned Kitano Hotel in Manhattan, New York. Here they extend their windswept branches in welcome, bringing joy to guests and passers-by alike.
Gladly shared by Betty Hanselman
Gardener’s wife
“April is a time of wonder, when the spring peepers emerge from hibernation and begin to call, when robins and redwing blackbirds come back north, and when new green life appears. That is one of the greatest of all wonders, the growth of a bud and a leaf from a seed or a root that has lain dormant in the earth all winter.”
~Hal Borland (American writer, journalist, and naturalist; 1900 – 1978)
Joyfully shared by Betty Hanselman
Gardener’s wife (& April celebrant)