After rain

 

Memorial day has a deeper shade of remembrance this year.  Not only for those gone in military war, but now in the terrible war on children, on women, the aged and infirm...and our communities themselves.

It rained good and hard the other day, and, while I was thankful for the feeding of the garden and the lightness of air it had brought, it occurred to me that even the atmosphere was in mourning.  The wind high and mighty, throwing down crumbling limbs, ripping magnolia and tulip poplar cups from the massive trees, moving ground itself...was this the anger of the skies against such untoward human violence?

The next day, walking out in the still-wet neighborhood, I looked down to this leaf on the road...it stopped me and my camera instantly.  It seemed so much a sign of sorrow.  In it, I saw a poem, remembered the title of a story or book (William Trevor, isn't it?), but the leaf itself, its teary surface, was image enough.

Early this morning, meant to grow hotter by late afternoon, I toured the garden, as I usually do...my first chore to pick up fallen twigs and pull the tiny weeds trees seed in the front slope.  As I circled, however, I noticed that the rain had left some wonderful, hopeful gifts...a few unexpected white blossoms and larger than seasonal green shoots.  I thought I would share them with you. 

Following a trail of downed oak twigs, I walked up to the Empress of China dogwood I planted last year, top center of the front slope.  

Such blossoms its first year in new ground!  Thank you, I told it.

Under the new gardenia Tom Krenitsky gave me was hidden the first of its flowers, scented and lovely, spared by the rain and wind.

In the back, our only sunshine, up have come the ginger from Angie...

risen from beneath the ground as they do year after year, 

but even so, their bright hardiness cheered me.

By the side wall, an oakleaf hydrangea, also planted a year ago, shot up its first flower...the deer must have missed it, for it chewed its companion a few feet away, despite the spice-and-pepper deterent thrown on it.

And behold, another...this one from the gardens at Montrose...a really enormous single  flowering...almost more flower than leaf...down behind the little book box by the street, luckily too awkward a space for the deer (no, don't feel sorry for them...they have yards of food hereabout...like the most enormous smorgasbord you can imagine to which they arrive in herds nightly and sometimes noonly). 

Near the front door, the giant spirea, from Holly and Steve a few years ago, turned pink and fuzzy.  It always does, but this time its return catches my eye differently, 

more somberly, for the storm has pushed down its middle, 

like the well of flour one makes for bread.

Even the nearly-gone poinsettia I left on the porch from early December, a gift from friend Jim, is topped with new green, looking forward to another winter's bright bracts.

So even in sorrow I am met by gifts of gifts and remember them, too.  

Now if only beauty instead of rage grew on our land.

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The next day

Remember that lone blossom on Tom's gardenia (above)?

This morning...overnight...this is what I found.

Gifts grow.

Quiet, cool mornings in May...blooming

 

Good morning, from my porch.  A little bit of rain last night has cooled the morning and set the birds singing and rustling the filled-out leaves of every tree.  Romeo, one of Joseph's cats, is in hunting mode, crouched, place to place, looking for small gifts to bring to his doorstep.  (We have a tiny resting place behind the irises for such.)  I am his snitch.

This weather is reminding me of how such lightness of air pulls me out into it.  Waking, I thought to take a walk early; then Jim texted, entertaining an early lunch.  Opening the porch door, though, sitting down with my first cup of hot water (coffee or tea comes later), I went back to my laptop to write to you.

Socializing has heated up these days, so this morning's quiet makes a calming point to begin the day.

Monday we celebrated my niece's, brother's and nephew's birthday; day before that a brunch for Mother's Day.  In consequence, the house is filled with vases of flowers...lovely roses and hydrangeas in one, sweet-scented  pastel roses from a neighbor's yard in another, a tall  bouquet of mixed flowers for Mary Ellen in a third.  On the kitchen sill, too, I've been keeping tiny glasses of individual blossoms each week, culled from wherever I find them around the yard.  This week it's white alyssum from the pot out by the driveway, but I've already spotted next weeks...some wild pink roses growing despite the overbearing ivy in the back.

The flower glasses remind me of (indeed, I was inspired to it by) my cousin Gloria Myers, gone now almost two years, who along with her weekly grocery shopping would pick up a bunch of flowers and divide them on her kitchen window sill...something to cheer up daily chores.  I think of her and the way everything in her house was just so...white, open, full of light.  I miss her.

Two Sundays ago was the memorial of a good friend, held in the Arboretum on campus, where he hardly ever missed a day wandering through.  This coming Sunday, a friend from Black Mountain (the painter Alexandra Bloch...she of the fabulous desserts, as well) is coming for lunch.  We'll walk first in the gardens, catch up with our lives, enjoy the blooms there as David would have done, and as I often do on my afternoon walks.  And then join Mary Ellen and a new neighbor on the porch to lunch on _____?

First, the back yard after my attempt to neaten it last spring;
second, the jungle it's turned into.

 Meanwhile, the first step to my new Garden with a Heart in the back came yesterday in the person of Steve Winkler, who has helped a few of the neighbors design and keep theirs.  Betty York introduced us, and we walked along the ivy-ocean getting acquainted with my inclinations.  He's a young fellow, quiet, with a good eye, knowledgable about what grows; he's well educated in landscape from both schooling and experience.  He likes the idea of stone and wood (as I do).  When he came back later to measure, he stood a while looking it over.  "I'm out here dreaming," he smiled.  Yes!

One of the birds in the huge tree by those wild roses I have my eye on has been twirping solo for a while...usually he or she (I think it's a wren) has a mate to converse with, but this time there is only an air-cooled echo to answer.  Maybe he or she is trying to give me its ideas for a garden, too.  I'll keep them in mind.

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Oh, and the total lunar eclipse on Sunday...here is the moon the other night readying itself to be outshine (as, I suppose, all of us must do...)