I returned to an autumn landscape: acorns underfoot, leaf litter, the late-summer growth of the climbing rose. I love this second bloom, have written about it before, will always be touched by it.
Today I see the fall roses as a valentine to summer, a hand outstretched with a bouquet.
Here, take this, goes the caption. Take these poesies with you into the next season, the one of chill winds and scant foliage. Let them remind you that spring will come again.
Here is the lesson hummingbirds bring to humans, at least this human. Not just their impossible splendor, their swift jabbing attacks at the feeder like knights at sword fights flashing silver, a miracle of motion that makes me appreciate my own movements, no matter how sluggish.
And not just their seemingly impossible, near-perpetual flight, though seeing it makes me think, no matter how much I’ve done in a day, it’s never enough.
It’s not even their way of pirouetting in front of me, as if to say thank-you, which speaks to me of gratitude whether they intend it to or not.
The lesson hummingbirds bring to me every year, from late April through late September, is, to use the movie’s hackneyed phrase … “if you build it, they will come.” Because, at least in this part of the world—and in many others from what I understand—all you have to do to see these glorious creatures is to fill a feeder with nectar and hang it it up outside. So simple, so obvious, like so many truths right there in front of me if only I would pay attention.
It’s cool and crisp today;. The witch hazel and the weeping cherry are starting to turn, but most trees are green, and pools of shade and light still dot the lawn.
Along the fence row, the ornamental grasses have settled in, grown up and out. They catch the light, their tassels gleaming. And the ferns, replenished by rain, are verdant again.
In between feeding runs, a hummingbird perches on the slim twig of the climbing rose, which bends slightly with its tiny weight.
I have the feeling I often have when struck by natural beauty — that I’d like to hold it, inhale or imbibe it, anything to keep it here.
Here it still feels like full-on summer, but with autumn officially beginning next week there’s more urgency to complete the tasks of summer — everything from weeding the garden to bathing the dog, a task that may happen later today, depending upon energy levels of both dog and humans.
Perhaps I should say tasks made easier by summer in the latter case, actions more easily performed outside that in, like the sudsing up and rinsing off of a sometimes cantankerous canine, or the cleaning of a feather- and seed-layered birdcage.
On the other hand, it’s also nice to read, write and think outside, to look and listen and remember, storing up the cricket sounds and bird calls for a leaner, bleaker season. Those activities should not — and will not — be forgotten.
The reading and weeding I did yesterday seem worthy of a post. The reading was for class, a chapter called Biology and Ideology. It was about Social Darwinism, eugenics, the values with which science can be laden, the ways science can be used.
I take notes as I read, because it helps me concentrate and remember. Reading a chapter takes a while, then, as I jot down the main points and attempt to digest them.
Which meant that I was ready for the weeding when it came. I was ready to swing my arms and pull out great fists full of stilt grass, toss it over the chicken wire fence. The motion freed my limbs, loosened my brain.
Wouldn’t it be nice if every day held a perfect combination of mental and physical work? I’m not saying mine did yesterday. But it was close.
(No picture of weeds handy; here’s a shot snapped on the way to class.)
I’m up early enough today that the morning is still getting to know itself. Crickets have yet to turn in; their chirps form the rhythm section for which bird song supplies the melody.
Copper has not only gone outside but has scampered down the deck stairs, an accomplishment no longer guaranteed and thus appreciated more. And in other pet news, when I uncovered the birds, Toby, the newbie, had found the highest perch and looked quite pleased with himself.
I hear bluejays and crows calling as I rise from the couch to make my tea. The back door is open. The back yard is mowed. Reading and weeding await me.
The details of a day I’m privileged to watch unfold.
(A photo I took Saturday, a few miles from home.)
You’d think writing several posts about the Brood X cicadas would have been enough.
I described how I felt sorry for them and their short lives. Then I wrote about how they inspired me to want to “seize the day.” Finally, I noted their departure..
What I haven’t yet described is what they left behind: the brown branches hanging from cherry, gum and oak. The crinkly brown tips that fall off and litter the yard.
Known as flagging — since the limp branches wave in the wind like so many sad little flags — the condition is not serious, I hear. Trees affected with this look sicker than they are, gardening experts say.
But for folks in my neighborhood, who are quite used to 100-foot oaks toppling over in a storm or breeze, any sign of sylvan distress is taken seriously.
Walking the other day, noticing the damage and thinking about a name for it, I came up with “brown-edged,” which reminds me of a cookie, the brown-edged wafer, popular in my youth.
Though a brown-edged tree looks nothing like a cookie, somehow that makes it easier to take.
“Good fences make good neighbors,” Robert Frost’s neighbor says to him, though the poet believes the opposite is true: “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall/That sends the frozen ground-swell under it/And spills the upper boulders in the sun.”
But when it comes to deer, good fences do make good neighbors — or at least they have this summer. Some of these day lilies haven’t bloomed in years. They’ve been nibbled off at the stem by a hungry mob of does and fawns.
This year, we put up chicken wire and caution tape (the latter is for Copper, who kept trying to run through the fence without it), and, voila, here are creamy yellow day lilies, lovely rose red ones, too. Here are the cone flowers in pink and white and russet. Here are black-eyed Susans, too. It’s a bounty, a visual feast.
For years I’ve relied on something called Liquid Fence to protect the flowers. But a heavy rain can wash it off during the night and a marauding herd of deer can eat every bud in sight in one unprotected evening.
“Before I built a wall I’d ask to know what I was walling in or walling out,” Frost says.
I don’t need to ask. I know.
I’m writing this post from the far reaches of the backyard, a place I seldom sit but am sitting now because of a lovely new garden bench.
The garden bench is a wondrous invention. Made of wood and surrounded by trees, it invites contemplation, pause, taking stock. It’s a place for reverie.
From here the house is just part of the equation, silent and still. Its worn flooring and stained carpet are safely out of sight.
The bench sits where I was thinking of putting my writer’s cabin, back when I was thinking I needed a writer’s cabin.
Now I think I may have what I need: a series of places — my new upstairs office, this wooden bench, the hammock, the trampoline, the deck under the rose-covered pergola — and, most of all finally, some time.
For a day that will end with the splashing of light across a night sky, that would if I were close enough to it, also include loud pops and bangs (but which will not since I’ll be viewing the fireworks from a ridge across the Potomac) … it is starting out calmly and quietly.
Bluebirds have been flitting between the neighbor’s yard and ours, their cerulean wings flashing out against the green grass of the yard, which backgrounds the birds when they perch on the chicken wire that now encloses the garden.
The deck, cleaned of the dried bamboo fronds that usually litter it this time of year, is blown clean and fresh. The air is cool, not yet humid.
It is a lovely, calm Sunday morning, a time to pause, reflect and enjoy.
