Even though we are working to implement permaculture philosophy into our yard (and our lives as well), I am dedicated to maintaining the trees and plantings that have existed on this property for the last 30 years or so.  This means a plethora of perennial ornamentals: peonies, lilacs, azaleas, Rose of Sharon, forsythia, irises ~ these plantings make me smile.  The only maintenance they require (for the most part) is letting them be ~ they grow, flourish, bloom, attract a plethora of insect life and then fade into the winter gray, resting until spring sunlight begins to call them back into green.

I can follow the arc of spring by tracking which blooms grace our dinner table ~ first the forsythia, then large bouquets of lilac (the smell transporting me to my rural upbringing and the lilac bush beneath my childhood, bedroom window), then azalea and the first of the iris blooms, now on this day, the last of the irises nestle into the fancy pom-poms of the peonies.
 
These flowers are the yearly reminder of someone living here before us, someone who put these beings into the ground ~ the person is a mystery to me, but their flowers remain.  Sweet reminders of some other day, some other whispered life lived inside the place I now call home.  People come and go, but the plants, they remain.  They are always home.