May 27 - May 31 Roses

2010-There is no verb following the word roses because no one verb is adequate.  Roses (the wild ones) not only are blooming but have permeated everything with their perfume.  Even my dreams have been beautifully and romantically affected.  Lucky for them they have this one magical (albeit short-lived) attribute, because without it there would be no reason to tolerate their sprawling, invasive, clothes-grabbing, skin-scratching existence. The pink tinged flowers are not particularly beautiful, except their fragrance makes them so.  Last year I gathered them up and made rose petal wine.  When it was new the rose scent was overpowering, but after aging a year it became pleasantly subtle.  Unfortunately, an unpleasant bitter aftertaste also developed.  Perhaps after another year it will dissipate.
2011-Summer has come all of a sudden; high 80’s hot and humid. But the changeableness still says spring. I was able to finally plant the seedlings I started (tomatoes, melon, cucumber)but they have suffered much from lack of light and I don’t know if they can recover.  I will plant more seeds alongside and they will probably catch up in a short time. The roses are behind this year, looking to need a week still before they open. The wine was not a success, but it did make a nice flowery vinegar.
            Storm
    How the maple tree danced
    With the wind last night!
    I didn’t know the old girl had it in her
    (Suppleness molded to majesty)
    The lightening burst on a wanton self  
    Usually hid in verdant maternal embrace.
    Were the robins shocked
    In their wildly rocking nests?
    Or did they just forget
    When the morning came, soft as May
    And nothing to show for the night but a leaf
    Here and there
    Hanging all askew.

2012-Suddenly I feel at war with nature. A rabbit (I think) is eating much of the garden. After fence fixing, deterrent spraying, trap setting, and milk carton cages something is nibbling plants. After finding a deer tick on my arm I am creepy crawly feeling all the time and slugs are gaining the upper hand, in spite of  conscientious Sluggo applications. Four mice so far dead in the kitchen traps; the weather swinging abruptly back and forth between hot and cold, wet and dry extremes. It’s all so adversarial, not my sweet gardening back to nature fantasy at all. Is every human endeavor on this planet bound to be shown up at some point as just another form of battle? What are we fighting, really? Is existence just struggle after all, or is it a sign that I am not aligned with what is?
2013-The roses seem still at least two weeks away, but; I’d saved one bottle of rose petal wine from the vinegar experiment and was shocked-shocked I tell you-to discover that it had evened itself out, lost the bitterness, and turned delicious with the faintest flower scent. And now that last bottle is gone.

May 22 - May 26 The Force That Through the Green Fuse...

2010-I love the dandelion plant.  Alongside the driveway, left un-mowed, they are now at least a foot high, fully seeded out and gradually releasing their little airships to the wind.  I think it is through their usefulness that I have come to appreciate them, but it is their striking robust vigor I’m appreciating now. Is it the intensity of their energy shining through the form that makes them seem so beautiful?  By the way, dandelion flowers dredged in a mix of corn meal and chili powder, then fried in olive oil, are absolutely delicious. 
I love robins as well. With their plump rusty breasts, hopping gait and beady black eyes, they seem the very emblem of cheerful curiosity as they scrabble around throwing up leaves and uncovering fat worms.  Has anyone ever seen a thin, depressed robin?  How fortunate I feel to take such pleasure in these common things. 
2011- Because of the continuing rain and the scoring job, I was unable to keep up with mowing and things got out of hand; the lawn became a meadow and how beautiful the seeding dandelion stalks looked!  Not to mention the birds enjoyed them immensely. One day I watched a rabbit suck in a dandelion stalk like a strand of spaghetti. Finally able to begin the lawn mower assault, I hesitated at the sight of so many different kinds of wild flowers ready to bloom, but I know from the areas that I have let go to meadow, the grasses, in one season, take over pretty much everything else.
The wet, cloudy, cool weather continues almost without a break day after day. Even when it isn’t actually raining the mist is so thick you end up soaking wet anyway. The plants seem to love it, growing in jungle like thickness but the lilac flowers that bloomed so heavily and profusely quickly rotted on their stems. I can’t put in the hot weather things I started, or even put them outside for more light and they are stunted and pale. it’s a pity and I don’t think they will be able to recover.  I might re-start some directly from seed if it ever warms up, but they will be so far behind.

The distant chainsaw               
And the hummingbirds’ buzz prune            
This May miasma.


Only the tangled shrubbery's
Need of shears motivates me.

2012-The wild roses are beginning but as I walked around the yard burying my face in the opening buds, I realized it was queerly silent. They should be vibrating with the buzzing of bees but I could find only one-a bumblebee. There were some honeybees in the crocuses earlier this spring and I felt hopeful, but today--not one. How can this be? What does it mean? Is it Silent Spring? The ash tree-the centerpiece of the yard, the only shade in summer-appears to be dying as well. Emerald ash borer? A disease it’s seemed to have on and off for years? A hummingbird habitually sits on one of its bare little twigs-today even it is gone.
2013-Amazingly, a few of the pumpkin plants have survived the frost, (after being turned to slime all the way back to the first leaf node) shooting out new leaves with a vengeance. Yesterday one actually produced a flower. The apple trees and the nectarine seem unharmed as well, and covered with tiny green fruits.

May 17 - May 21 Hummingbirds Return

2010-Actually it’s a week or two past their arrival.  J hung his feeder out two weeks ago and said he saw them. T said she saw them the other night out back.  I heard one close by in the front yard when I was hacking back the forsythias in the afternoon, but I couldn’t find it.  Then I sat for an hour last night waiting while I ate dinner, but none came. What if the hummingbirds were to disappear--the peepers?  I can say I couldn’t bear it, but experience seems to indicate I would.  No heartbreak or tragedy is ever great enough to just make it stop.  No matter what, we plod on, muttering to ourselves that we must.  Life, our little life, goes on.
In the Gulf of Mexico, an unprecedented oil spill continues to occur in spite of all efforts to contain it.  Thousands and thousands of gallons drifting across the Gulf have reached the delicate marshes of Louisiana.  A naturalist on the radio broke into tears when he described it. I saw a video of a dragonfly pathetically trying to clean itself.
Then we tried to rationalize, reasoning that oil is a ‘natural’ material and no doubt an undersea earthquake could release  a similar spill.  Nature must have her way to deal with it.  All around me ravishing beauty undermined by this intrinsic suffering.
How is non-attachment different from not caring?  I want to feel, but when I do, it feels like my heart is breaking.
2012-A few days of just ‘perfect’ weather-cool air and warm sun. I’m tempted to put the tomatoes in but the night temps are still a little cool. A bunny is getting in the garden somewhere and biting the tops off the peas (totally gone), broccoli and kale. It’s always something isn’t it? A mouse dead in the trap last night in the kitchen, a tick squashed under my nail-still battling with nature. I read a section in a vegan cookbook that described the necessity of thinking of that diet not in terms of what one can’t eat but what one is embracing; a new relationship with other living things, one without harm or bondage.
2013-The pumpkin plants I put out too early look not quite completely dead. Will that spark be enough to save them?

Tiny gold birch leaf
Nestled in fragrant leaf mold,
Spring-born just to fall.

May 12 - May 16 Other Yellows

2010-Under the far apple tree a patch of buttercups has appeared.  They are always present in the grass at this time of year, but I don’t remember ever seeing such a patch; so defined you can see them from inside the house.  They are like a beautiful yellow patch of sun shining upwards into the branches of that ancient withering tree and caused me to remember the day, years ago, when I lay underneath the flowering tree in a kind of ecstasy as petals rained down on me.  I wondered if my over spilling emotions had somehow left an energy there that manifested in this golden blooming.
One secret I feel like I am learning from watching more closely is how every season and year is different from ones gone before. There are good years for the apples and bad garden years altogether like last year.  Sometimes the lilacs last forever, while other times you blink and miss them.  The wisteria climbed the lilac tree for years and years expending all its energy in length and bulk, and then, inexplicably, just the right conditions create a fragrant purple waterfall. And this spring the fairy circle of buttercups.
2011-Every time I come inside I find one or more wood ticks crawling on me and usually later on one or two more appear, crawling out of my hair or some such thing.  Yet I haven’t seen one slug.
2012-With the continuing cool spell, I haven’t even been tempted to put out the houseplants, though I have transitioned them to the front porch. Last night again there was a chance of frost though I think it only got close. Next spell of night temps is in the fifties so maybe that will be it for frost. I’m going to plant out the cabbage family stuff though still holding back on the amaranth, cardoons and shiso. “I hope you are waking up to the most beautiful morning in May you have ever anticipated.” Someone on the radio just now. Yes.
2013-When I started my seeds back in ?, I should have held off on the faster growing tender plants, the pumpkins and sunflowers. Last week they seemed too big to keep in pots anymore, so after checking the ten day forecast and confirming the expected temperatures, I planted them out. Well this week’s temperatures began to be forecast lower and lower until finally a freeze warning was issued for tonight. I’ll protect them as much as possible with little milk carton greenhouses, but possibly I just gambled and lost. At times like this I remember to really appreciate farmers whose livelihoods are in the balance.

May 7 - May 11 In Praise of Dandelions

 2010-Though it’s summer according to the old Eastern almanac, the temperature has gone down to freezing two nights in a row.  We have had peepers here for a while but in this cold weather they have gone silent.   Summer?
2011-A new bird at the feeder, a female rose breasted grosbeak.  Is the male around?  The apple trees are at full bloom but it looks as though the nectarine won’t have a single blossom.  It continues cooler and more cloudy than I want it to be and despite my efforts, it is getting to me.  The height of foolishness to be irritated at the weather, but every time the sun goes behind a cloud, my heart sinks.
Beginning of a renga:

    The red bud in flower
    Viewed against a stark white wall
    Says more than I can.

    Here on this stark white paper
    Nothing kindles, nothing blooms.

2012-Word out at the reservoir is that there are no eggs this year. Something to do with the new mate? Anyway, there are said to be three (nesting?) pairs out there.  Exactly a year after seeing a female, I spot a male rose breasted grosbeak at the feeder. They must be a returning pair. Sadly for him it’s empty since, wary of the bear, I’ve decided not to refill it anymore until the fall.
I watched one of the grey feral cats stalk something and lunge at it then run away with a small rabbit in its jaws. The female has had a litter under a honeysuckle bush and when I was able to get close while she was off doing something I saw that there had been seven kittens born but one had died and was lying off to the side, decomposing. Everywhere is overwhelming beauty but if you are really going to take it in you have to take in all of it.
2013-The dandelion is a marvelous plant; useful, beautiful and cheerful. Something wonderful happens to your eyes after an hour of picking dandelions for wine. Each one begins to look like a little sun and all that sunlight is pouring into your head through your eyes, flowing down your spine and up again, igniting all your energy centers. Almost unbearable joy. A gift to all and yet we despise them because they are ubiquitous.

May 2 - May 6 Poison Ivy Rears Its Head

2010-The poison ivy is really strong this year, its shiny maroon leaves suddenly catching my eye everywhere. I look, expecting flowers, and find its taunting presence instead. I heard vinegar will eradicate it, but a gallon poured on the very new sprouts alongside the studio seem to have no effect at all.  I can’t imagine how much you would need.  Anyway, I end up pulling it out by hand and, even with gloves and long sleeves, end up with little itchy patches all over me.
2011- A couple of beautiful sunny days and then back to cool, cloudy, rainy for the next chunk of days.  Remarkably, I haven’t seen a slug-I did put iron phosphate down, but still-not one. Awesome.
Picking dandelions for wine the other day, it came to me that one way to grasp the fleeting being of each particular  beautiful detail of the passing of time is to partake of the particular activity that goes with each.  Never did I really appreciate early March until I made maple syrup-the beautiful starry evening I never would have seen because it seemed too cold to go out.  And a warm late April afternoon is inside me forever because I spent it sprawled on the grass picking furry little sunny blossoms.
I thought I heard a hummingbird buzz outside the window and sure enough the migration map says they are here though I thought it was too early.  So I hung up the feeders but haven’t seen one yet.  (A day later-hummingbirds!)
2012-I hung up the feeder weeks ago in the warm spell because the online migration map indicated hummingbirds might be up that early, but the weather turned back cold and I never saw (or heard) one. But yesterday there one was-pretty brave little guy going right over my head to the feeder. I saw him trying out dried butterfly bush flowers from last year and the dried frizzle of this year’s nectarines and then back to the feeder. Without it, what would he find? This morning I heard the buzz right outside the front bedroom window. No real slug problem this year-really dry up until lately, but something has eaten the beet seedlings while leaving everything else-even the chard.
2013-Flawless days, cool nights. I cannot imagine how heaven could be more beautiful. The hummingbirds will find the apple, wild plum and nectarine tree in full bloom when they arrive. The temperature went down to 37 last night, but according to the long range forecast it won’t go lower than the mid forties again. No rain for a week and things are more than a bit dry.