Wild Summer flowers #phenology

This first week of June, local columbine came into bloom. The first bloom of dandelions has turned into puff-ball seed clouds. Dragonflies have appeared en masse to feast on the hoards of mosquitos and other flying insects that have hatched. Creeping Charlie, wild strawberries and wild violets are replacing what passes for a front lawn. The Better Half has mostly salvaged a day lily bed that was overtaken by grass. We've come close to, but not yet reached, 90℉. The trees are at full leaf out and we've even begun to put away scarves and knitted caps. "Summertime, and the living' is..."

Aquilegia canadensis (Red Columbine)

Photo by J. Harrington

Next week we'll start regularly checking the local patches of prairie smoke to see if seed heads have developed. We're going to try to start some plants from seed as an over-the-Winter project. That may, or may not, necessitate acquiring one or more grow lights and finding a place to hang it or them. None of this year's plantings look like they've become demised yet, nor are they showing any signs of new growth. It's been dry for several days, so we watered them today. Maybe that will encourage some growth. Can you tell that patience is not one of our strong points?

Geum triflorum (Prairie Smoke), going to seed

Photo by J. Harrington

All in all, we seem to be making reasonable progress toward the beginning of Deep Summer as the Solstice approaches. Now, if we can work more fly-fishing into our routine, we'll be doing really well. At least now we're getting off our duff and out into the neighborhood. That's a lot better than we were doing back just four months ago.

Wildflowers

By Reginald Gibbons

Coleridge carefully wrote down a whole page

of them, all beginning with the letter b.

Guidebooks preserve our knowledge

of their hues and shapes, their breeding.

Many poems have made delicate word-chimes—

like wind-chimes not for wind but for the breath of man—

out of their lovely names.

At the edge of the prairie in a cabin

when thunder comes closer to thump the roof hard

a few of them—in a corner, brittle in a dry jar

where a woman’s thoughtful hand left them to fade—

seem to blow with the announcing winds outside

as the rain begins to fall on all their supple kin

of all colors, under a sky of one color, or none.

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