counting

Are you a counter? 505 spent day lilies snipped off today. All on a lovely summer morning, with a promise of work-friendly temperatures all day long. A high of 75f  (24c). Delightful! Breakfast is two hours later than the average, but that's because the garden beckons and I'm there with the flowers and Ed is there with the compost pile and the young orchard trees and before you know it we are close to noon.

These are the weeks of the day lilies. Such a special flower! To me, they look their finest when flanked by a mass of blooms, preferably a mixture of lilies and all the other perennials that do well here. Say a proportion of 40 lilies to 60 something else. At the farmette, sometimes they dominate a bed, sometimes they take a back seat. Well, never actually a back back seat. Just not always center stage.

 

 

 

 

Hey! My trumpets are blooming! They herald the arrival midsummer -- I mean, not the calendar midsummer -- this year, that was 15 days ago (June 24th), but the mindset that I have each year, where it feels like we are as many days into the summer season as we are away from its end. So, mid July.

These majestic day lilies bring out the song in me, but this year, instead of music, I turn to Mary Oliver. There's a reason for it: as I snip off spent lily blooms, I see our resident humming bird peck at the blooming monardas. You can't see him in this photo, but he's there!

When the hummingbird
sinks its face
into the trumpet vine
and the funnels

of the blossoms,
and the tongue
leaps out
and throbs,

I am scorched
to realize once again
how many small, available things
are in the world

that aren’t
pieces of gold
or power–
that nobody owns

or could buy even
for a hillside of money–
that just
float about the world,

or drift over the fields,
or into the gardens...

So beautiful... All of it.

I weed weed and weed some more (two bucketfuls) and then I count the minutes I have left before I must scoot over to my daughter's house. This afternoon, the younger family arrives in Madison again. Here for just two nights, but that gives us bits of three days. Starting right now!

(2 cousins)

(4 are eating fruit roll-ups)

(the young one)

(Primrose is very keen on babies)

We eat dinner at a bier garten. Take out foods on picnic tables, while the kids, restless little beings that they are, romp and jump and romp some more...

... and dance. Because there is music.

 

 

The kids -- now there are four of course, but only three are mobile -- they have the energy of ten galloping horses. I notice that now, when I find myself having the energy of maybe half a horse.

 

Watch, play, watch, until it's time for the youngest and the oldest of us to retire for the day. They go home, I go home. In a handful of hours, the morning will come and we'll be together again. For now, I retreat to the quiet of the farmhouse and within a very brief period of time my eye lids are heavy, my rhythm slows to a crawl and I know it is time to go to sleep.