Working on balance

Today the breeze is freshening, or the wind is picking up, or some of each. If I were on a trout stream I'd be timing my casts between gusts. Instead, the breeze helped clear the air in the garage after I finished cleaning winter's crud from the side where the Better Half usually parks her Jeep. My side will get some attention tomorrow or the day after or sometime soon. After fifty or sixty years, I'm finally starting to find a balance between "the world will end if this doesn't get done now," and "the longer this gets put off, the more work it will be when it's finally time to tackle it." Sort of like realizing that it's not going to work well to let December's first snow just sit there until it melts come spring.

elderberry bush in the wet spot

Photo by J. Harrington

The wet spot in the back yard has an elderberry bush in bloom this summer. The Better Half claims she  just scattered a handful of seeds a year or two ago and, as if by magic.... Will it produce berries? Will we get to the berries before the birds? (or the bears?) We'll see. Meanwhile, there's no sign of the blazing star plants or the swamp milkweed I planted several years ago. Perhaps some blooms will appear later this summer, perhaps not. Maybe the competition from the grasses and sedges was too much for them. Maybe the aberrant weather this year put a crimp in their style. Then again, our track record in getting plants to grow where we planted them is even worse than the winning records of most Minnesota professional sports teams, in part due to our four-legged neighbors, like deer and pocket gophers, and  their appetites.

swamp milkweed from a past year

Photo by J. Harrington

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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