NEW YORK–Spring is sailing along. Want to go? Click here if you want to go model boat sailing in Central Park.

Central Park today is bursting with blossoms and bright with the fresh green of new foliage. The cool April air and its promise of showers bring to heart the joy of flowers and the hope of the garden. I’ll return to Bee Cottage in a few weeks, and I’m full of beans about it… Meanwhile I’m pre-occupied with a writing project this week and thought I’d delve into the archives. Here is the very first entry in this blog, not a year old, titled Bee Cottage: Welcome to My Garden; the posting of which, given my then-technological prowess, I regard as something of a miracle. Click on the title/link above, or continue below.

EAST HAMPTON, July 6, 2011–Summer is finally here, and Bee Garden is as happy about it as I am. Here is a peek, with more to come in the days ahead. I am so grateful to the lovely and talented garden designer Jane Lappin and her crew at Wainscott Gardens who keep it looking so beautiful. Thank you thank you!

I love the little bee carved in to the gate. It took forever to get the design just right, simple as it is, but now I use it on calling cards, stationery, towels, and linens. Not to get carried away.

This is the roses’ second summer, and we’re training them up the columns. By next year they should reach the beams, and oh boy that will be beautiful. Gardening is not for the impatient. That is the joy and the madness of it. (Woops I see some bad-hair-day privet there in the back. Gardening isn’t for the overly uptight, either; even though I sort of am… sometimes… about my garden.)

Clearly I need to get out there and dead-head.

Have you ever seen anything like these dahlias? They look like they fell off a Puerto Rican Day Parade float. And bless their hearts they bloom and bloom and bloom until frost. Many flowers make me smile, but these make me laugh.