A friendly flash saved me from a speeding ticket tonight.  Cop car at the end of the cornfield.  Corn so tall now that I couldn't see it.  Out west I think they used to say knee high by the Fourth of July but that would be a poor year anywhere now.  More like higher than an elephant's eye.  I love these corny old sayings.

The aphids prefer one ( Read more... )

I knew as soon as I saw the wilted oak hydrangea piled in the trash can that there wouldn’t be anything left.  I couldn’t  bear to confirm that for a few days. I’ll miss the air of that place and the blooming spiderwort.  I regret not trying to take the hydrangea home.

One of the hollies has died of shock but the littlest one which I gave up on is ( Read more... )

Daises in my field. Daises everywhere. My only open-minded moment on the road yesterday, I looked over and saw daises covering a grassy hill. And a deer. A deer in the daises. That phrase makes me smile. That image lingers into today. Green, brown, white.

I am in love with my neighbor's oak hydrangeas. Funny, how love starts. Something you are aware ( Read more... )

I should have gone home this weekend. The thought of going stayed in my mind all weekend. Friday night, I knew I was too tired for the drive. Saturday morning was full of bad dreams, vivid and ugly, and the rain was coming, all day Sunday, so I did my chores. My share of the work, which is rarely done. Mowing, hauling. Truly work, nothing ( Read more... )

The sky is blue. So they tell me. Do you see it too?

Nothing but work in my life these days. I gathered one more bag of weeds from the empty space and uncovered some old brick and ivy and some common mallow. I like that plant. Weed, noxious and invasive. So they say. But the leaves are pretty-shaped and you can see the mallow in its flower.

On Derby ( Read more... )

I weeded carefully. Around the one tulip, past blooming, color unknown. I removed all the old poke and the new and some of the hemlock. It's important to be careful. You never know what you might find. There is a plant which resembles spiderwort but I cannot tell. I weeded round and left it there. I left the fleabane. I found some ivy. I filled one ( Read more... )

are blooming in the old garden.

Change and loss was what the brook cried
That she heard in the night-but she kept snug
With crow-wood for kindling, and the sun shone good
Through the tops of the pines, and her plants
Didn’t fail her  . . .  .

Jean Garrigue
        After Reading The Country of Pointed Firs

After a gentle winter, every tender thing thrives. The breath of spring lingered outside my kitchen window. Wildflowers filled the hillside behind dad's house. Yellow and purple and white. Butterweed, wild geraniums and trillium. Wild white wood sorrel and phlox. May apple crowding down to the road, spilling into the sunlight. The peace of walking ( Read more... )

As I have for several springs, I dug up some of the daffodils from where the old house stood. I like to think my grandmother or my aunt planted them there and after the house burned down, they spread on their own account. It was so long ago now it probably isn't true, but they don't grow anywhere else along the road, so maybe it is so. Late- ( Read more... )

One of the last warm enough to sit outside days, with no coat. The coffee shop near my office has an outdoor seating area, with trees. Between last week and this one, all the leaves dropped. Probably all at once, like my yellow maple. One day there, next day bare. No matter how you expect it, every year the same, still it surprises. That bareness. ( Read more... )