a good year for wildflowers: 2014
Photo by J. Harrington
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Today we declared last Autumn's efforts to start a wildflower patch next to the burr oak at the end of the drive a failure. The corners of the driveway where it meets the township road have been mowed. This past Autumn, I did little more to prepare the site than rake heavily with a metal tined rake and then scattered the seeds. That's consistent with a number of other failures we'd had trying to get wild flowers, ones we've planted, to grow anywhere on our property. On the other hand, the feral oregano keeps expanding and taking over the "lawn," and the little bluegrass we seeded about twenty years ago is still thriving.
asters with bee
Photo by J. Harrington
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The years when we've had wet Springs and Summers have brought an abundance of wildflowers by this time in June. Most "normal" years, no so much. That's likely an example of seeds lying dormant until conditions are conducive for a successful germination. Maybe, if the small engine specialists ever return our tiller, we can till, fertilize, and seed the area again this Autumn. That should improve the conditions and we'll then see if anything comes up next year. I also want to look for more robust aster plants. None of those we planted for the past several years have made it through a Winter.
Where Does the Dance Begin, Where Does It End?
By Mary Oliver
Don’t call this world adorable, or useful, that’s not it.It’s frisky, and a theater for more than fair winds.The eyelash of lightning is neither good nor evil.The struck tree burns like a pillar of gold.
But the blue rain sinks, straight to the whitefeet of the treeswhose mouths open.Doesn’t the wind, turning in circles, invent the dance?Haven’t the flowers moved, slowly, across Asia, then Europe,until at last, now, they shinein your own yard?
Don’t call this world an explanation, or even an education.
When the Sufi poet whirled, was he lookingoutward, to the mountains so solidly therein a white-capped ring, or was he looking
to the center of everything: the seed, the egg, the ideathat was also there,beautiful as a thumbcurved and touching the finger, tenderly,little love-ring,
as he whirled,oh jug of breath,in the garden of dust?
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