Gardens and artists seem to find their way together. There is little doubt as to why, the draw of colour and colour combinations, shapes, shadows, contrasts, highlights, it is a living design school.

I have several books on artists gardens, ones about paintings and ones about earth. They take me through quiet evenings sometimes very snowy ones with the promise that when spring comes I will follow enthusiastically the path of all things reaching sunwards.

The shade garden is a personal favorite though, walking through the woods and finding tiny lilies, lady slippers and pale yellow moccasins growing on mossy ground in fractured  light. It may be the surprise of finding them, such fragile beings amidst the tall trees, or simply their delicate structure and tenacity in survival. I rarely can continue without bowing to take a closer look.  There are three little yellow mocassins in an off path of the garden that are almost ready to bloom. I will check them again today if the sun finds them, it might be their  time to shine.  Just beyond the open space there is a thick grove of lily of the valley, their gleaming white bells amidst a sea of green.

The fiddleheads have unfurled their tightly wrapped stems, I popped a tip in my mouth but missed snipping for cooking again this year. Things move so quickly, even when you are watching closely, every day brings change. In the midst of the dance we hardly notice, but change happens, life is full of motion and we are meant to be part of the continuum. It is a curiosity that we wish as well to hold fast to the moment.