'Tis all part of the circle game #phenology

Today's weather has been cloudy, dreary, damp with occasional showers. It pretty well matches our mood, although occasional sightings of both the male and the female Baltimore orioles and several hummingbirds at the feeders brightened our day a little. We find it hard to believe that Summer is almost one third gone this year.

swamp milkweed in bloom, with visitors

Photo by J. Harrington

Based on our photos, the swamp milkweed, or at least some of it, appears to have been planted in 2016. We're not sure if last year someone mowed too close early in the season and did it in or if last year was just an off year for it. Slowly but surely we're coming to accept the fact that nature is organic and somewhat(?) irregular, not linear and mechanical. Anyhow, we hope that soon any nearby monarch butterflies will be happy to find the swamp milkweed blooms.

later July pears

Photo by J. Harrington

Pears might be starting to show on the tree. We'll take a close peek when we go out to poke and prod for the active pocket gopher tunnel we think we discovered during the grass cutting of the past couple of days. There are so many gopher mounds it's a challenge to find the current ones.

One of the reasons we're probably more Eeyoreish than usual this week is that one of our favorite writer/poets passed away recently. Donald Hall, of Eagle Pond Farm, New Hampshire (who was married for years to another favorite poet of ours, Jane Kenyon, also gone too soon) had recently published Essays After Eighty, on the trials, tribulations and joys of aging. It strikes very close to home for this of us also growing long of tooth. In remembrance and anticipation, we'll put aside some of our current readings and, for the rest of June, pick our way through some of his shared wisdom and insights about the aging of man.

Ox Cart Man

Donald Hall, 1928- 2018

In October of the year,
he counts potatoes dug from the brown field,
counting the seed, counting
the cellar’s portion out,
and bags the rest on the cart’s floor.

He packs wool sheared in April, honey
in combs, linen, leather
tanned from deerhide,
and vinegar in a barrel
hoped by hand at the forge’s fire.

He walks by his ox’s head, ten days
to Portsmouth Market, and sells potatoes,
and the bag that carried potatoes,
flaxseed, birch brooms, maple sugar, goose
feathers, yarn.

When the cart is empty he sells the cart.
When the cart is sold he sells the ox,
harness and yoke, and walks
home, his pockets heavy
with the year’s coin for salt and taxes,

and at home by fire’s light in November cold
stitches new harness
for next year’s ox in the barn,
and carves the yoke, and saws planks
building the cart again.

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