Lavender days #phenology

Corn fields in or neighborhood look to be about fifty or sixty percent tasseled. There are a few places, and, thank heavens, only a few, where roadside sumac leaves have picked up some shocking red color. What seems most noticeable though are the swaths and swatches of roadside lavender. Some of it is wild bergamot, some looks like Canada thistle, some is crown vetch, soon there'll be New England aster and there's probably other pinkish-lavender flowers on plants that can't be identified readily at forty or fifty miles per hour, but a predominant color these days is pale purple, with chrome yellow accents.

roadside field of wild bergamot

Photo by J. Harrington

This morning I had an opportunity to help out one of the neighborhood pollinators. A bumblebee, no, I don't know which species, managed to get him/herself caught in the nectar pool of the oriole/hummingbird feeder, despite the beeguards in place. Must have been a very persistent bee. It promptly climbed onto the twig I extended. I placed the twig with its bee cargo on the deck railing. After I finished cleaning and refilling the oriole feeder, the twig, sans bee, was still there. I assume the bee returned home with a Bilbo Baggins scale adventure tale to tell. Do you remember the Loren Eiseley tale that "made a difference to that one?"

In a different bit of serendipity this morning, I came across a charming poem that seems to fit both the season and our troubled times. It was written by W. B. Yates, a long-time favorite poet that I've neglected for a while. I hope you enjoy

The Stolen Child

W. B. Yeats, 1865 - 1939

Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water rats;
There we’ve hid our faery vats,
Full of berrys
And of reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim gray sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

Away with us he’s going,
The solemn-eyed:
He’ll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal chest.
For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than he can understand.

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