The cherry trees in the backyard are in their prime and glory, with blooms tumbling off tiers of branches, and petals falling delicately in the wind. In the warmth and sun, they don’t last as long, but the trade-off for the fine weather is more than worth it. I planted this tree when we first moved into our home. Barely five feet tall then, it soon shot up and out. Ten years later it’s about twenty-five feet taller (and in dire need of further pruning, but not until these beautiful blossoms fade).

This is a single-flowered cherry tree, and one of the earliest. It flowers before most of the foliage leafs out fully, lending it an aspect of elegance as the blooms are held starkly against branch and sky. It begins white, changing gradually to the slightest shade of the lightest pink toward the end of its blooming cycle. Fruit – inedible for most folks – will appear later in the season, but it usually gets eaten by the birds before the fall. (In fact, I’ve never seen fruit on the tree once the leaves have fallen, and most is picked off before it’s even ripe.)

A promise kept by Mother Nature, these flowers linger into the lusty month of May. It is one of my favorite times of the year – when all is hope and promise – and the garden begins its first major flush of bloom. The featured photo is a small group of hyacinths. I planted these a few years ago. The first year of bloom is the spectacular one – with the full head of blooms, looking almost fake to be so perfect. The years that follow settle down into a more natural state, as seen here. I personally find that first year a little overbearing, at least in the plant world. This is the way it should be.

Next up is our cherry tree, a single-flowered variety (the Kwanzan explosion begins a bit later). While the blossoms are simple and small on their own, taken together they light up the sky with bright criss-crossing branches of blooms, presented before the onslaught of foliage, and all the more impressive for it. Examined closely, they reveal details that might otherwise go overlooked: as these age, they will turn the slightest bit pink at the center and edges. It’s a subtle change, usually missed for the quick duration of its stay, coming as it does near the tail end of the bloom’s life.

After the drawn-out winter we had, it’s not just the flowers that offer sweet relief, as evidenced by this stand of chives in the sun. One of the things I like best about this time in the gardening year is how bright the greens are, how fresh they look. For many people, gardening is all about the flowers – how to get the biggest, brightest, and most abundant. For me, it’s also about the foliage ~ the texture, the hues, the shape, the style. The endless variety of life, teeming with possibility, at one of the most beautiful months of the year…

This old cherry tree lives beside an old, out-of-commission, slightly dilapidated church in downtown Albany. I don’t pass it as a rule, but it seems every year at this time we find our way on a different path that brings us near it. And then I make Andy pull over so I can get some photos.

It’s in a semi-sheltered area, so it comes into a bloom a few weeks before our cherries start their show. It’s much more immense than any of ours, full of well-earned character, multiple-trunks, and tier-upon-tier of weeping pink blooms. In the midst of a bleak downtown, an abandoned church, and a dreary lot, this tree blooms and transforms the world around it for a few days.

After two full-days in the garden – heaving and moving four cubic yards of mulch (that’s a freaking lot), transplanting and repositioning certain plants, amending and pruning others, my body and brain are both fried. I’m a little apprehensive of what tomorrow morning will bring after everything I did to my physical being this weekend, but it’s a good kind of pain. For now. And it was not without its rewards in wisdom. Here are a few choice notions that crossed my mind over the past two days in the garden:

• If I ever write that gay garden porn memoir/guide to life I’ve long threatened, it shall be titled ‘I Should Have Worn Knee-pads.’

• In a pinch, it is possible to steer a wheelbarrow with one hand and one hip, for emergency wiping of sweat off the brow (and it doubles as good by-stander entertainment too).

• When push comes to shove, and there’s dirt on the glove, you can push your glasses up with your elbow.

• Mucus is NASTY after you’ve been breathing in tiny dirt particles all day.

With sound-barrier-breaking stereo systems, surround-sound entertainment empires, and ubiquitous ear buds, we are bombarded with noise of some sort at just about every waking moment of the day. I’m not one of those people who wears ear buds – only if I’m on a train or a plane ride or at the gym (which I haven’t visited in two months anyway). The rest of the time – on the subway, in the car, walking around – I leave them at home. Wearing them seems to lessen our interaction with the world. And as much as I like my solitude, I also enjoy some engagement. There was a time during my college years when I had a walkman and headphones with me at all times, buffering the universe with as much Madonna as I could muster. While it gave me a certain confidence (you should have seen my ‘Express Yourself’ strut down Newbury Street), it also removed me from the environment, lending distance and isolation.

I first realized the power of silence about ten years ago, when I went outside to prepare the garden for spring. In the past, I had worn headphones when raking and bagging leaves. It seemed to move the time faster, offering a bit of entertainment while working so hard. For whatever reason, that year I went to work without music, without noise, without a stereo by the back door. In the beginning it was disconcerting. After years of hearing something while working, the silence was, well, silent. But it wasn’t really. My ears just needed to realign themselves with nature. Soon, it wasn’t so quiet. The wind was the first movement, rushing by my ears, rustling leaves and pine boughs, and trilling through brittle grass reeds. The rake was the second movement, slow and uncertain at first as I sought a comfortable rhythm, then regular and efficient as the winter’s detritus made its way into manageable piles. The third movement was comprised of the wildlife – the chirping and fluttering of birds, the chattering of squirrels, the squeaking of chipmunks, and the calling of insects. Forget the quiet, this was an aural landscape rife with variation and noise – the music of nature at full blast.

But beyond that transformation was the more subtle peace that came with the absence of all the man-made music and sensory overload, the filler stuff that occupied so much of the world. It took an hour or two to decompress from that static – and if you fought it, if it felt alien and uncomfortable, it might take even more – but eventually a new calm came upon me. As it does in yoga or other meditation, it takes time to realize a change. That patience is the hard part for most of us. We want instant relief, and we want it now. Anything that requires waiting is rarely embraced. Yet that is the key to the whole concept of finding a zen-like peace in the garden. It cannot be rushed. It will happen in good time, when it’s ready to happen. There is no rushing, no ten-minute workout, no fast-fix that will result in immediate contentment. That sort of thing takes time. The garden is where I learned that.

The thoughts that first crossed my mind were the usual worries – but they passed. Then it was the concern with the tasks at hand, which end to begin on, what project to tackle next, would it be better to do a little of everything, or finish one entire task – and then those too passed as I found a method. Finally, maybe a few hours later, I looked around and felt it: the supreme sense of peace and calm. The euphoric runner’s high, the last relaxing posture, the destination reached before you even know you were journeying. Maybe it’s simply the satisfaction of finishing a full day of physical work. Maybe it’s something more.