approaching Summer #phenology

While walking SiSi at mid-day, we noticed that the goat's beard (Tragopogon dubius) flower buds are developing. Blossoms soon! More hoary puccoon has come into flower. Multitudes of dragonflies continue to cruise the fields. If the breeze settles down, tomorrow will be dedicated to picking up our Community Supported Agriculture share box and, when  we get home, spraying the poison ivy.

goat's beard in bloom

Photo by J. Harrington

We've not yet planted the Three Sisters Garden, nor have we foregone that  option for this year. Maybe  we'll be able to get the tiller started tomorrow and create three or four mounds and get some corn planted. We've noticed that many of the local row crop farmers have sprouted corn a couple of inches or more tall. Remember the old saying about  corn being "knee high by the Fourth of July?" Here's what the Farmers' Almanac says about that. It appears that little, if anything, is very sacred in the fields of folklore these days (or much of anywhere else for that matter).

late June corn, no knee high by 4th of July

Photo by J. Harrington

In hopes of actually getting to wet a line some day soon, we added a few more dry flies to our collection. We've been trying to go exploring several days this week and have been rudely subjected to John Lennon's lyrics "Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans." (We discovered today that Lennon wasn't the first to use such a phrase.) It's possible we may be forced to reduce some of our interests due to the complications provided by COVID-19, weather volatility, and other factors of life in the 21st century. Does anyone want  to offer some recommendations on cheery science fiction novels of life in an alternate universe?

Planting the Meadow

By Mary Makofske

I leave the formal garden of schedules 

where hours hedge me, clip the errant sprigs 

of thought, and day after day, a boxwood 

topiary hunt chases a green fox 

never caught. No voice calls me to order 

as I enter a dream of meadow, kneel 

to earth and, moving east to west, second 

the motion only of the sun. I plant 

frail seedlings in the unplowed field, trusting 

the wildness hidden in their hearts. Spring light 

sprawls across false indigo and hyssop, 

daisies, flax. Clouds form, dissolve, withhold 

or promise rain. In time, outside of time, 

the unkempt afternoons fill up with flowers.

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