Tuesday, July 13, 2021

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
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
swamp milkweed from a past year
Photo by J. Harrington



Planting the Meadow



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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