Simply Wildflowers

I noticed this unfamiliar flower stalk in the weedy verge across the road as we drove out on Friday.

Closer inspection didn't help with identification--likely not a plant which grew in our New England fields.

Time to dig out the old wildflower book and search for a look-alike.

A shorter stem of the same plant. The actual flowers have a bit more pink in their coloring than the camera caught.

Brown-eyed Susans, cheerful and hardy.

I have always liked Queen Anne's lace.

Quite a marvel that the flat flower head turns to a nest of seed.

This seed head has a definite tint of rose.

Wildlings seem to survive drought and all manner of abuse while our pampered and pricey perennials may give up.

Macro

I have owned my present camera [ a Canon Power Shot A2000IS] for about a year.  In that time I have done little other than to use the "auto" mode or the setting for night shots, experimenting with the zoom feature.

Two booklets came with the camera, but I have small patience or skill in fiddling with "tech-y" stuff.

To be honest, I like things to work "perfectly" without a lot of practice.

I have been increasingly unhappy with attempted close-ups which missed the beautiful details of flowers or insects.  The camera manual turned up in one of the boxes I rootled through this week.

This being a day of weather unfit for woman, man or beast to attempt strenuous labor, I decided to play with the camera settings.

The flower garden is languishing in the heat, but I have hoped to let seed heads ripen and self-sow.  I've noticed that the hummingbirds and butterflies don't care that the flowers are shabby, so that has been another reason to leave them in over-blown and untidily flopping dis-array.

Two of the spicebush [Eastern Swallowtail] butterflies were damaged and clearly near the end of their short lives. This one was dull and ragged but still gamely flitting from flower to flower.

The monarda is going to seed but still appealing to the butterflies and humingbirds.

Still not as sharp a photo as I would like.  Butterflies don't oblige by "holding still."

A gold-spangled fritillary on a red zinnia.

This tiger swallowtail was huge--and very busy. 

I remember a summer when I was about 12 and decided I should acquire a butterfly collection.

I fashioned a "net" from a piece of my mother's old nightgown fastened to the wooden dowel from a windowshade and I was off for hours, trailing butterflies through the pasture.

Today I tripped over cucumber vines, ran around the edge of the flower garden, trying to get a good shot of this creature.

Today's hibiscus. A thank you to Chris J, for suggesting the color "Chinese Pink."

I tried repeatedly for a shot of this opening bronze sunflower.  The bloom is above my head and the wind was blowing just enough to make the photo blur.

I took this shot in the evening with the overcast sky darkening into dusk.

Another of the "dwarf" sunflowers with an insect visitor.

Detail of a dark sunflower in bud.

A bud of the tall golden sunflower.

Buds on the pink hibiscus.

My proficiency in photography has a long way to go.

I will always be an amateur with an inexpensive camera.

Still, the quest for photos to share is yet another interest and a continuing joy.

For as many remaining years as I can be out and about to explore the intricacies of Creation, I will never be bored.

Sleeping Over

Branches of a maple against the evening sky.

I know my grandfather's world in the daytime. In the summer, if I wake early, I can be next door with him just as he finishes breakfast. He eats alone in the dining room of the old farmhouse, accustomed to his aloneness through the many years since my grandmother's early death.

Usually the dog is with him there, waiting silently with begging eyes for the last doughnut crumb to fall, for the last curl of bacon to be offered.

My grandfather takes the last sourdough pancake from the covered blue and white serving dish, spreads it thickly with maple sugar from the crock, folds it, oozing soggy sweetness and presents it to me.  Lapping maple from my fingers, I follow him through his mid-morning chores.  He comments on the size of the Hubbard squash rampaging over a mound of composted horse manure, one of his experiments with saved seed. 

I trudge behind him up the uneven stairs to the shed chamber to sort through saved bits of old harness.  We recall when last summer the calico cat hid her two kittens up here, nursing them in an old barrel softened with grain sacking.  We had discovered them together--or so he let me think.  They were people-leery; when I cuddled one to my cheek it cried and spat, tearing at my skin with tiny sharp claws.

Back downstairs, my grandfather mends harness, sweeps out the granary, sharpens a scythe.  I tag him, contentedly listening to his measured talk, stowing away his tales, resting in the familiar ease of his steady pace.

"When can I stay overnight?" I ask, as I have many times before.  The answer this time is a surprise:

"You can stay tonight if your Ma doesn't care."

My mother, petitioned at home during lunch, agrees as long as I come home first for supper and to bathe, since the indoor plumbing at my grandfather's house consists only of cold running water in the kitchen.  In the early evening I appear, newly washed, trailing my seersucker pajamas over one arm.  I find my grandfather seated on the edge of the back "stoop" his feet soaking in an enamalware basin of cool water which rests on the uneven slab of granite which serves as a step.  He has shed his blue chambray shirt and his striped galluses dangle at his waist. His shoulders and upper arms which seldom see the sun, emerge palely from his white undershirt  in contrast to his browned  hands and wrists.

We sit together while small night creatures tune up unseen in the garden.  Moths flutter against the screen door, swallows dart after insects.  It is not quite dark when my grandfather rises stiffly and pads to the end of the porch to slosh the remains of his foot bath over the small peach tree which has taken root there.

The screen door slaps behind him, slaps again as I follow him into the dimness of the house.

I stand about, waiting, curious, as my grandfather carries out his bedtime rituals, a part of his day I have never witnessesd. A trip to the "outhouse" in the far corner of the woodshed; a dose of baking soda and warm water for indigestion; the winding of the old clock on the shelf.

Upstairs the spare bedroom waits for me. The bed looms hugely, its painted  headboard reaching toward  the low ceiling.  The one light in the room is an old fashioned fixture hanging over the bed, a length of saved string is attached, one end to the pull chain, the other to the bedpost.  A "one-eared kitty" [my uncle's name for a chamber pot] squats discreetly on a rag rug near the washstand.  Everything in the "spare room" is white and stiffly clean in tribute to my house-keeping uncle's fondness for bleach and Oxydol soap powder.

Leaving my door ajar, my grandfather scuffs down the hall to his own room.  I lie alone beneath the towering headboard, small in the crisp white sheets, savoring the strangeness, slightly awed by the reality of my long-cherished wish.

There is no sound in the house of other people, no rattle from the kitchen, no muted voices from TV or radio.  My uncle walks the hills of the farm alone in the evening dusk.  He will return to read in the kitchen with his small radio perched beside him, turned low for company.

Much later, still awake, I hear his light quick tread on the stairway.  He pauses at my door, somehow aware that I am not asleep, asks softly, "You alright, Bunny?"  His footsteps fade into the shadowy stillness, his bedroom door creaks gently open and then shut.

I wait for sleep, comforted by the small sighs of the old house enfolding me.  A light breeze ruffles the branches of the maples outside the west windows; the starched curtains scratch along the sill as they billow inward.  From the dark regions below the mantle clock announces the hour--eleven--and soon the half hour;  it's dinning, almost unnoticed in the daytime, rolls in hollow tones up the stairwell.

Down the hallway the even rise and fall of my grandfather's snoring falters and breaks for a moment. He belches loudly and comfortably.  The bed springs creak as he resettles and his snoring resumes, rising and falling, measured breath, in and out.

A bird in the maple utters a muted squawk, then the night hush creeps back.

The breeze freshens, moving through the open windows of my grandfather's quiet house, and we sleep.

Written at Writers' Retreat

Wentworth, N.H.

1997

96 Degrees F.

It is too hot to write creatively.

It is much too hot for constructive thought or rational views of life.

The vines of the garden lie limp and faded.

J. has covered some of the tomato plants with old white curtains which I unearthed.

Some of the tomato varieties have a very open foliage habit and the exposed tomatoes are scalding before they can ripen.

The cats are alternately quarrelsome and lethargic, sprawling and stretching, snarling and snipping when their space is infringed upon.

I have made more pickles, rising before 7 this morning to start the brew of vinegar, sugar and spices simmering on the range.

I have finally gone to the tiny local post office to mail CD's.

I didn't mind waiting while the clerk, new to her job, fussed over the scales and the postal charts.

The PO is air-conditioned.

I delivered more surplus cucumbers to the Amish lady who keeps a bulk foods store in one large room of her house. The Yoder's garden isn't flourishing and pickles are a staple on Amish tables.

We are happy to share the cucumbers.

I have been to the library [also air-conditioned] and to Wal Mart--the shopping place we love to hate.

I have spent a frustrating hour scanning documents from the closing on our property in Wyoming to [hopefully] prove to the electric company there that our residence in that state terminated in February!

A rather desultory day of heat and fuzzy brain.

J. has gone out to water the languishing garden.

It is meant to be 10 degrees cooler tomorrow.

We can only hope!

Attention Deficit Disorder

This strange beetle-bug was dithering about on the edge of the planter. [I didn't take time to edit the photo. ] He darted here and there, changing direction, seemingly without purpose.

As I thought of the kindly comments reassuring me that I'm not [really not!] becoming senile, it came to me.  Maybe I have ADD--a lack of ability to stay focused sounds nicer than dementia.

However, if I'm really "losing it" I think I'm in pleasant company.

Sugar Baby!

Summer doesn't get much sweeter than this: Sugar Baby watermelon fresh from the garden.

Watermelon doesn't give much indication of its degree of ripeness.  We've been eyeing the largest ones for several days wondering if they were ready.

J. brought this one in when he finished watering the garden tonight.

We made rather a ceremony of cutting it.

It should have been share and share alike.

J. took his half in the other room, while I leaned dreamily on the kitchen counter savoring each bite, having quartered my section.  When I reached for the other quarter--it was gone.

The term "greedy" has been bandied about!

The Fear of Senility

It has been another day of perfect weather.  I have invented a series of small chores to keep me outside, coming into the house only long enough to prepare simple meals and to put up yet another batch of pickles.

The early bunching onions were ready to harvest, so I dug those and spread them along the row to cure in the sun. I trailed J. as he fed Pebbles her grain and put on her fly hood. I watered transplants and noted a few perennials which would be improved with pruning.

After breakfast I gathered my red-handled snippers, a plastic bucket for picking beans and headed toward the lower garden.   I made it as far as the edge of the carport and encountered the rural route mailman pulling in with a package for "Miss Sharon."

I unpacked the box which contained paperwork finished by our Wyoming book keeper.  Heading back toward the garden I was distracted by the growl of the chainsaw in the front yard and ambled around in time to see J. lopping the bottom ground-sweeping limbs from the magnolia tree.

I watched as the branches with their glossy leaves shuddered to the ground.  There was a newly opened blossom on one branch and I rushed in with my snippers to rescue it.

With a circle of cats watching admiringly, I chose a green Fiesta bowl and settled the magnolia as a table decoration, before trotting back outside to see where J. might be wielding his saw.  By dint of vigorous gestures I indicated that he should trim  a shrub which had grown lopsidedly far above my reach.

In the midst of tumbling branches, a furry form shot around the corner of the house and dived into the shade of the hydrangeas. 

Charlie the Cat Who is Not Meant to Be Out.

Once outside, Charlie, an omnipresent pest in the house, becomes untouchable.  When one approaches him, puts out a tentative hand, coaxes, Charlie skitters off.

J. clearly on a mission, exchanged the chainsaw for the gas-powered weed whacker and and began to methodically zap weeds and lush undergrowth along the sides of the house and behind the shrubs.

"Charlie," I shrieked above the whine of the whacker;  "You'll cut him up!  He's in the shrubbery!"

"No, he's not," bellowed J. "He's down peering in the sliding door, looking at the other cats who are looking out at him!"

Of course when I got there, Charlie wasn't.

His whacking finished, J. went to fetch tractor and wagon to haul off the debris.  I circled the house, calling Charlie and caught a glimpse of him lumbering through the box hedge , around the north side of the house and back into the hydrangeas. Parting the branches I spied him flattened on the ground.

"Good Charlie," I crooned, trying to reach him without falling flat.

Charlie ran.

After another turn around the perimeter of the house, another dive into the shrubbery, I got ahold of Charlie's tail and hauled him up, dumped him uncerimoniously through the kitchen door.

From the vantage point behind the hydrangeas I noticed that there were some blooms untouched by recent rains, fresh and pretty.

I decided to cut some for the house.  They would be striking, I thought, in one of my vintage McCoy vases and I knew just which carton in the garage was labeled, "Fragile. Antique Crocks and McCoy Vases."

The vases were not in the labeled carton.

A glass pitcher was in the box and I hauled it out to use as a container for the flowers, rinsed it at the kitchen sink and returned confidently to the carport for my snippers.

I retraced my steps to the garden looking for the snippers.

I looked in the kitchen, looked on the bathroom vanity, on my desk. I looked in each place twice, pondered a bit, peered at any surface in the garage where I might have laid aside the snippers while I clambered about to search for the McCoy vase.

In a mindset approaching mild panic I wondered if I had dropped my snippers into the mailman's car when he handed out my package.

In exasperation, I got the kitchen scissors and cut my bouquet of hydrangeas.  I arranged them to my satisfaction, sternly informed Jemima that  No, they were not meant for her to eat. Tweeking a bloom into better position I raised my eyes to the buffet cupboards and spied the McCoy vases on an upper shelf---where I had placed them a month ago while unpacking china.

At about that moment J. entered the kitchen, ready for an iced drink.

"I've misplaced my snippers," I said, by way of conversation. "I've just wasted 45 minutes trying to find them."

"Snippers?" said J. vaguely, sipping iced tea.  "The red-handled ones?  They're on that stack of boxes in the carport, just to the right of the door."

"They are not in the carport," I replied with some ire.

"Yes, they are" [firmly] "I just put them there."

"YOU HAD MY SNIPPERS?"

 "Well, yes, they've been in my back pocket.  I thought I might need them.  If you wanted them, why didn't you ask?"

I considered, briefly, dousing him with iced tea.

Charlie bustled ingratiatingly between us.

"Oh," said J. "I see Charlie's back.  Did he come in on his own?"

"Charlie," I replied with forced patience, "Charlie was in the hydrangeas, was probably there when you were whacking at them."

Hearing his name, Charlie mewed, rubbing his head against J.'s boot.

"How did he get out," I mused.

"I expect he shot out when I was adjusting the latch on the front door," said J. with mild unconcern.

"It doesn't matter, he's back.  He's not very bright, you know."

I looked at J. glared at Charlie, considered retreiving my snippers and resuming my garden chores.

With great dignity I announced, "I'm taking a book and a glass of iced tea and I'm going to sit outside."

I think about senility, old age. I consider the stealthy approach of dementia.

I try to calm myself with the soothing thought that moving leaves us muddled about our belongings.  Too many interuptions distract us from what we mean to be doing.

The breeze under the trees is cool and flower-scented. The tea is icy and refreshing. A cardinal sings, unseen in the branches above my head.

Surely, for these few moments, all is well.