I think this week could be called high spring. Everything in garden world is bursting with new life. I hardly know where to begin.

Usually, as I go about my daily comings and goings, I jot down some observations so I remember to mention them in this weekly writing. I misplaced that note pad and here it is Tuesday evening and my memory is failing to serve.

The wisteria on the pergola at Morrice the Florist is in full bloom. It looks especially nice against their new paint job. I am quite fond of the color choice.

Mother’s Day has come and gone. It’s a bittersweet day now that my own mother is gone. Every year my son Jeremiah gets me some sort of ornamental shrub or tree. Reuben plants it for me. This year I got a dwarf read cut leaf maple. I hope to bonsai it. It’s positioned nicely in front of last year’s yellow magnolia.

There is a 30-year-old crabapple tree planted back when the children were barely teens. When a person plants a tree in their 20s or 30s it is hard to imagine what 40 or so years will do. I planted a sugar maple purchased from the Felix Neck tree sale back in the late 1970s. It was barely six inches tall. Now, it towers over my house. I could probably tap it one of these years. My Dad had a big stand of sugar bush (he always called the trees bushes). He boiled the sap in a homemade 50-gallon drum. It takes 50 gallons of sap to make a gallon of syrup. Remember that if you want to complain about the price.

Dad often would tap a few telephone poles on the edge of the property to amuse and/or confuse passersby.

My friend, Phyllis, and I both noticed separately the number of white dogwoods here and there in the woods at the State Road entrance up North Road. There is even one lone pink one.

At the other side of that entrance, at the old Humphrey place, there are tons of blooming fruit trees. I saw a Baltimore oriole perched in an apple tree. They visit mine as well.

I need a driver so I can spend more time looking.

The vegetable garden is beginning to produce. There are plenty of greens available. I’m picking just enough asparagus for an omelet every morning. I have my first sugar snap peas. I’m not bragging. My outdoor plantings are just getting started. I had used up an old package a couple months ago in the greenhouse. They actually germinated and produced. Good to know for future years.

How I wish I had nothing but good news but that is not the way of the world. Aphids are attacking my kale. I am soaking all the cole crops in salt water before preparation. A rat or mouse ate and rummaged through several flats of newly emerging sunflower seedlings. Where is that pesky barn cat when he should be on duty?

My Star of Bethlehem has bloomed. I was beginning to wonder. They are a welcome replacement for snowdrops. They have spread over an area of 20 square feet. I wish I could remember where I got them — some friend long ago dug a clump and passed it on.

Thinking of the Star of Bethlehem brings me to our current situation in Jerusalem. The Wall Street Journal ran a side-by-side shot with Ivanka Trump dressed in a white suit with her blond hair and perfect teeth. She was unveiling the new U.S. embassy moved to Jerusalem. The other side of the photo showed unarmed protesters being shot dead by Israeli border guards.

DJT does whatever he wants so I think we all need to get used to it. He called the three released Korean-Americans heroes and thanked Kim Jong-un for letting them go. John McCain, however, was “no hero because he was caught.” I wonder if anyone thanked Ho Chi Minh?