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Urban Corn

Urban Corn

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Was it whimsy that landed this corn plant here? An urban gardener looking for some fun?

I can’t imagine that it’s a volunteer. And if the sower of the seed was hoping for a bumper crop, well, there are only so many ears you can harvest with a single plant.

When I first saw the corn plant I was on a bicycle, phone camera back at the house. But my recent wanderings have taken me all over Reston, so on Saturday afternoon I found myself right back at the corner — the urban corn corner — where I’d spied it a few hours earlier.

So here’s the little corn stalk that could. Not exactly of Midwestern proportions, but not bad for a little plant in the Virginia suburbs!

Morning Salute

Morning Salute

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I write from the deck, early though it is. I want to be with the morning as it slowly unfolds. Want to be with those first birds — the bold? the restless? — as they greet the day.

It feels like rain. The air is full of moisture and a steady breeze flows in from the west. The early storm is an aberration and for that reason exciting. We are accustomed to the blistering heat that collapses of its own weight, that can only be released in a burst of sound and light and rain. But the morning storm is a riddle to me. Has it been brewing all night? Is it left over from the heat of yesterday?

Whatever the case, the dawn continues to unfold, shapes slowly emerging from the backyard, first the azalea bush and then its individual leaves. First the day lilies and then their buds. I can even see through the backyard and across the street now. Two red oaks, their tall trunks like masts, emerge from the darkness to salute the new day.

Light After Dinner

Light After Dinner

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Last night I sat on the deck after dinner watching the daylight drain away. The air was
full of moisture and I followed the bats as they darted through the air. They were invisible until they crossed a patch of still-blue sky. 
The wind picked up, moving
the tallest oak branches. They might be palms waving in a tropical
breeze, the fringed opening to an underwater cave, guardians of heaven.
As I sat there, the sky darkened and a faint star blinked
beyond the blue. Frogs sang and lightning bugs danced ever higher in the sky.
It was after 9 but I didn’t want to go inside. 
On nights like these it’s easy to believe that summer will never end, that it will always be light after dinner, that there will always be more time. None of it true, of course. But lovely to believe just the same. 
Living Through Them

Living Through Them

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Studiously avoiding a Father’s Day post — or even a post Father’s Day post — too painful this year — I turn my attention to the natural world, to the deck, where (truth be told) a chunk of my natural world experience occurs. (Hey, I can’t be tramping through the woods all the time. A girl’s gotta work!)

This morning, as I start my en plein air office day, I watch the birds flit from feeder to perch and back again. Hummingbirds zoom to their nectar founts and attack them with fencing-like maneuvers. A young chickadee lands on the railing and hops his way to the feeder. A male cardinal splashes in the bird bath then flits off to the azalea bush.

What I notice is the constant motion, from perch to trough and back again. What seems an impossible distance to me — up fifty feet to the dead bough of a towering oak — is but a few wing beats to these creatures. They make living look easy. It’s good to live through them today.

Chicken of the Woods

Chicken of the Woods

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When I spotted it a week ago, I thought it was a flower. So brilliant, so orange. What kind of flower, of course, I had no idea. But I’m an optimistic gardener, also a bit near-sighted, and from a distance it appeared that some brave unknown volunteer had settled down into the clay soil.

On closer inspection, of course, I learned the truth. Not a flower but a fungus. A flower of darkness. A decomposer. Beautiful at its business, thriving on wounded oaks.

A little research and I have the answer — laetiporus, chicken of the woods, so called because it is edible and tastes like … yes, chicken.

I’ll get my chicken from chicken, thank you very much. Beauty I’ll take wherever I can find it.

Busting Out

Busting Out

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It’s what June is doing. What the song celebrates. What you can feel in the morning air, the promise of warmth but not humidity.

The hydrangeas that were thinking about blooming in April and beginning to leaf in May are finally getting serious now.

Tomatoes and herbs are planted, annuals are potted. And the climbing rose is showing its stuff.

I can live with this. 

They’re Back!

They’re Back!

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“I don’t like hummingbirds,” said Celia as we finished up dinner on the deck a couple nights ago. “They look like big bees.”

And they do. In fact, it often takes me a moment to figure out which one I’m seeing — a big bee or a  tiny bird.

For the last few weeks we’ve had plenty of both as the wood bees (their fat bottoms wiggling into holes in the pergola so they can chew it to pieces) and the hummingbirds (back from southern climes) flit around the house.

Hummingbirds winter in Central America, I learn, and often return to the same feeder on the same day. They gorge themselves on insects beforehand, often doubling their body weight (which still isn’t much, of course) for the 500-mile (18- to 22-hour) flight across the Gulf of Mexico.

So this little bird and its ruby-throated mate are world travelers, intrepid souls that whir and wing their way thousands of miles in pursuit of nectar and insects.

With knowledge comes admiration.

The Grass is Shining

The Grass is Shining

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Because it’s new. Because it’s well-watered. Because it’s May. These are some reasons why the grass is shining.

I’m not really sure, you see. It may just be the way I look at it, the way the wind bends the spears. The angle of the sun, the time of day, planetary alignment.

But I walk around, examine it from all sides. It’s shining no matter where I stand.

I don’t remember it shining like this other years. But it was a long winter, a long spring. The grass was biding its time. We all were. But now it’s summer and the grass is shining.

Catching My Breath

Catching My Breath

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So begins a long holiday weekend, last hurrah of the school year and opening salvo of summer. It is a delicious morning. Scrumptious. Meant to be eaten with a spoon. Or no, with a fork, slowly. Not slurped or inhaled but consumed mindfully.

On a go-to-office morning I would be encased in glass and masonry by now, shut off from the elements. All head, no heart. But today I’m at home, windows open, air flowing through the house. Birds outside, birds inside. Music everywhere.

Time for a long exhale. Very long. Then another, and another. The long winter is over. Time to catch my breath.

Grow Up

Grow Up

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Trees do it. Flowers do it. Even exasperating toddlers do it. But at this time of year it’s hard not to be thrilled by the sheer verticality of the green and growing world.

The climbing rose is a case in point. It grows up and out. Or over and out, depending upon how you look at it. And you’ll have to take my word for it, because this picture doesn’t capture it.

The point is, the branches grow out so the roses can grow up. Such is the power of the sun, of the life force.