Bleeding Hearts

On a pretty regular basis, people who hear that I relocated from Denver to Cincinnati, ask me if I don't miss Denver. After all, they will commonly observe, Denver is beautiful, and Cincinnati is -- well... Cincinnati.

Cincinnati is the Rodney Dangerfield of American cities... Remember his signature line -- "I don't get no respect."

I tend to answer that question with a series of observations about the differences between the two places. It is my way to point out that there are charms and delights to be found here, even as there were in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.

One of the things that I love about this place, is that there is springtime here. Dependably. The winter will fade away and the warmth and light will come flooding back and the earth blooms in an ever-changing palette of color and texture. It is like watching a slowly unfolding, and enormous, impressionist painting.

There are things that grow here, and flowers that bloom here that I just love. I have bleeding hearts in my garden. I have always loved these delicate and lovely little plants. My grandmother called them "pocket book plants," and her garden was the first place I ever saw them when I was a child of perhaps five or six years.

You cannot grow bleeding hearts in Denver. It is simply too dry and too hot and the season comes too late. In Denver, spring blooms routinely get flattened by those notorious late spring snow storms. Far better to stick to the hardy, and sun-loving summer bloomers. If you live in the foothills, it is best to put a painting of bleeding hearts on your living room wall.

My bleeding hearts come up each spring, and I am always surprised. I have not had them long enough to take them for granted. They come poking through the warming soil in the early spring, and I look at them and ask myself what that plant is... and then they burst into bloom, and I am once again delighted and enraptured and enchanted.

And so it is that I have come to put down roots, literally and figuratively, in this place I now call home. There are no soaring peaks and very few of the stunning vistas that were my joy in my Colorado home, but here there are lovely colors and a warm and musical springtime and bleeding hearts in my garden.

swan