Abutilon sounds like a song

Every spring for the past five years or so, Other and I have taken the train from Grand Central to Chappaqua to meet up with our friend C, who picks us up at the train station and ferries us to the nurseries in her area, where we buy new plants for our deck. We take her and her husband out for brunch, and she drives us back into the city. It has become a rite of spring for us.

But there is something a little wistful about the exercise. Container gardening has a high failure rate. Not enough soil to insulate the roots in winter, not enough space to "let the fields rest" from time to time, not enough expertise or dedication to adjust the PH or find the perfect fertilizer. We are constantly trying to replicate our glorious successes: those magnificent moonflowers that bloomed in slow motion all one summer, then failed to germinate the following year and cast up morning glories after that; the sweet-pepper bushes that filled the air with a nutmeggy syruppy scent but failed to really rebound after we gave them an ill-advised pruning one year; the abutilon with the adorable yellow bells and red clappers that we neglected to bring in one fall; the honey suckle we grew from a two-inch-long cutting that thrived fragrantly for 15 years, then mysteriously died; the sweet-smelling purple petunias sturdy enough to resist the dread white fly; the elephant ears that made my kids look like pygmies.

At each nursery we look for the ones that got away. Today we gave up on the purple petunias finally but bought yet another honey suckle in hopes of a survivor and replaced the leggy purple butterfly bush with a red one. We found an abutilon with peach-colored bells and marigolds the color of California poppies. And we stunk up the car with a lavendar plant that made my nose run and my eyes water.

The forecast is for rain for the next five days. Next weekend the stinkwood will be in bloom, fouling our deck with its eau de catbox. Then the odors of the plants we brought home from the nursery will prevail. It is springtime in Manhattan.