Country living trade-offs #phenology

This morning one of the whitetail deer does walked through the back yard with her fawn sometimes in tow and sometimes leading the way. There's another one, we think, that wanders the neighborhood with her yearling daughter (no sign of antlers in velvet). We've almost reconciled to the idea that being able to regularly watch whitetails is a fair trade for the munching they do on our plants. Almost, we wrote, and we're not sure the Better Half [BH] shares our degree of acceptance. At least the deer haven't eaten her day lilies, yet. But then, they haven't started blooming yet, either.

the daylily bed in bloom

Photo by J. Harrington

It looks as if the BH has actually managed to salvage several, or perhaps more, of the day lilies in the bed on the slope behind the house. The lilies had become overgrown with grasses last Autumn and didn't get weeded until late Spring this year. Our knowledge about lilies stops with the awareness that they're pretty flowers that aren't know to be deer resistant. Why so many of the plants haven't perked up since the weeding is beyond us. We're just kind of proud of the fact that we avoided mowing them down when we started cutting the grass this year. If we ever get three consecutive days of sunshine, the three or four stalks with buds might actually show some flowers. That'll be the day.

daylily buds, blooms and past primes

Photo by J. Harrington

The Lily

by Mary Oliver

Night after night
darkness
enters the face
of the lily
which, lightly,
closes its five walls
around itself,
and its purse
of honey,
and its fragrance,
and is content
to stand there
in the garden,
not quite sleeping,
and, maybe,
saying in lily language
some small words
we can’t hear
even when there is no wind
anywhere,
its lips
are so secret,
its tongue
is so hidden –
or, maybe,
it says nothing at all
but just stands there
with the patience
of vegetables
and saints
until the whole earth has turned around
and the silver moon
becomes the golden sun –
as the lily absolutely knew it would,
which is itself, isn’t it,
the perfect prayer?

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