Time has slowed down since the pandemic began. Weekend errands, drives to and from the aquatic center, and swim meets are all gone. We planned to sail on Saturday. We had the boat hitched up and drove further away from our house than we have in 72 days now.
But the highway was closed, and traffic on the detour was backed up for miles. We turned around and came home. My boat hat transformed into my reading in the garden hat.
I sat in the garden and read Saturday and Sunday both. If the sun was up, I was outside. I finished one book, and then another. And I took some photos of the lush emerald green. The garden never as deep and fresh a green as it is in May..
The basil we started from seed went in the ground this weekendI read The Pearl almost entirely from the garden this weekendMy little prairie bed with my new bird bath in the background 😍
Penstamon
Lamb’s ears
Orlaya
Yarrow
Prairie bed with yarrow, catmint, prairie dropseed, black eyed Susans, switchgrass, liatris, and little bluestemYarrow and salviaMy new bird bath the kids gave me for Mother’s Day ♥️My favorite grass in all the garden: Mexican feather grass
Yarrow and catmint
Dewdrops on fescue heads
The back bed starting to fill inOur little house with my reading chair under the dogwood tree
I ran yesterday between appointments at work. I needed to get outside. I needed exercise.
When I returned home, I walked through my garden, as I always do in spring when I come home from a run. The only plant in bloom in my garden is the forsythia, but as I looked around, I saw the mint is coming up again. The lavender kept its leaves through the winter. So did the rosemary, and the sage.
I thought about people buying bouquets at Kroger to perk themselves up in this time of self-isolation. I also thought about advice a friend in customer support gives, to keep a self-care kit by your computer when working in support. What struck me about her advice is that the kit should have something for each of your senses, so that when the work gets hard, you can go to the kit to pull yourself into your body with touch, taste, sound, smell, and sight.
I found a jelly jar in the pantry and grabbed the snippers from the garage, and I made myself a self-care bouquet of mint, sage, lavender, rosemary, and forsythia blossoms. The yellow blooms are a joyful contrast against my home office’s sky blue walls. When I need a zing of the outdoors, I rub my fingers on the mint to release its invigorating scent; when I need to be soothed I rub the lavender. When I want to get hungry, it’s the rosemary’s turn. And when I want something pretty, I just look at the bouquet.
My fiddling in the flower beds is never done. These past two days, though, rain has forced me indoors to watch the garden instead of work in it. I went out today between showers to get some photos.
I spent last week’s daylight hours almost exclusively outside. I drank my morning coffee indoors, then put on my gardening gloves and hat and spent the days digging, carting, planting, and shoveling. I calculated on my gardening blog that I spread more than 2 tons of mulch in about 3 days. I was exhausted by the end of the week, but now everything is so pretty I can’t help but just stand at the windows (it’s raining) and admire all the plants that are about to burst into bloom. I ventured out into the drizzle today to capture these early buds and blossoms.
These tulips will open any second now.
Redbud 😍
The lilac will smell delicious when these blossoms open
The dogwood remains a favorite. I take this same photo every year 😛
The redbud is thick with fuscia buds this year
Our dogwood and a front bed before anything fills in
Hosta unfurling under the dogwood
Rhododendron and wood pile out back
Tiny yellow flowers on my new spicebush
These photos aren’t great due to low light, but I want to preserve them here so I can see where everything was this time of year when I look back at my blog next year :-).
All that work laying out flower beds, killing grass, shoveling mulch, and digging 150+ holes to drop plants into has paid off. I’m sitting under the dogwood tree, watching a hummingbird drink from pink salvia flowers not ten feet away while further down the garden a monarch lays eggs on the milkweed.
It has been weeks since I’ve had a chance to bring my chair under the dogwood to enjoy the flowers, but yesterday, beast though it was for all the chores, I got all of my must-dos done so I could do exactly that: sit under a tree and watch the hustle and bustle of a summer flower garden.
Writing and butterfly-watching
We’ve been getting more butterflies as August marches on, and I usually see them from the car window as I arrive or depart the house, or from the living room window while I type on my laptop for work. Not enough do I come out and sit in the fresh air with the mountain breeze and the insect sounds.
Yesterday, amidst all the chores and errands, I squeezed in some gardening in the horrid heat. I got to see everything up close again and engage with the flowers, the herbs, the bees, the dirt, the aphids. I waded through waist-high salvia to deadhead, chopped forests of thigh-high basil, cut milkweed so infested with aphids I couldn’t touch it without getting little orange bodies all over me, and pulled tufts of grass and dandelions until my fingernails hurt.
And in the middle of all that chopping, weeding, and squirting aphids with soapy water, I saw our first monarch caterpillar. That fat, squishy, striped baby butterfly made every bit of the work worth it.
Now, I hear the rat-a-tat of cicadas, the buzz of two fat bumblebees, the honk of a Canada goose flying overhead, and the shh-shh-shh of my husband sanding our canoe in the garage. A cool breeze lifts the pages of my pretty journal, and glassy dragonfly wings shimmer in sunlight over the grass. The butterflies weren’t out when I first came out. The morning was too young. But now they’re coming.
It’s Sunday morning and I’m under my tree again. These past days have been hot ones, but under the dogwood, I’m able to stay cool. This is my favorite place to be on weekends — in a camp chair, in the shade of my favorite tree, observing the garden.
A few minutes ago, from the chaise lounge inside, I watched a swallowtail drink from the milkweed for a good five or ten minutes. Its big wings beat furiously as it flitted from flower head to flower head and drank deeply. When it finally flew away, it staggered like a drunken sailor.
“Maybe it was a female and now it’s going to lay eggs on the parsley!” I said. “Or the rue.” I tried to peer farther out the window to see the parsley plants.
Then it occurred to me that the resident bird population might eat any caterpillars we get. “They’ve eaten all the blueberries, too,” said our son.
Oh well. This is the way of things.
I moved outside for a better view of the host plants, to watch for any signs of egg-laying. The swallowtail hasn’t come to the parsley, but a hummingbird is drinking from the bee balm about 15 feet away. It’s tiny body shimmers emerald in the sun, and its wings hum as it beats them fast enough to hover while it drinks from red trumpets.
Ooh ooh! Here comes the swallowtail! Towards the parsley, close to the parsley, will it see the parsley?
Nope, flew by without stopping. Dang.
It’s okay. Butterflies have been rare so far this summer. Now they’re finally coming. They’ve found the little oasis we tried to create, filled with host plants for caterpillars and nectar for adults. I see five flitting through the garden right now as I type.
Butterfly Mind 