MinxterBLOOM

so I worked at long overdue tasks, including the newly dappled box canyon between my house and JC's. I hope that the foxglove seed themselves here. She put a stockade fence up two years ago. I am thinking about painting one or two trump loeil birch tree trunks. I miss that tree from the northern climes. However, 'tis JC's fence and not mine. Not that she looks around the corner.

I like the red wagon upright, as if hanging on the tree.

The Red Wheelbarrow
so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

-- William Carlos Williams

Here is an audio clip of this wee but true poem.

This is for friend RD, who is a lapinaphile. Not to eat but to cavort with. The plant is in my back stoop windowbox: Spanish lavender, Lavandula stoechas ssp pedunculata, ringed with white alyssum.

Taken at night with a digital camera. Not bad. Can you hear the raccoon in the background?

I will need to move this plant in the fall, to a sunny corner where I amend the soil with sand. But for now, I like the jaunty tips at the back door.

From B. Potter's Tale of Benjamin Bunny:
Old Mrs. Rabbit was a widow; she earned her living by knitting rabbit-wool mittens and muffatees (I once bought a pair at a bazaar). She also sold herbs, and rosemary tea, and rabbit-tobacco (which is what we call lavender).

Backyard tableau: all the foxglove in the yard are shades of pink. The swing is primed and shall be painted next week. I am thinking lavender-wash grey. Furniture in the shade wants light tones. The electric-lemony green of last year was too upstart a shade.

In the foreground are two Francis Williams hosta clumps, ringed by the reliable but stolid green lirope. Ivy is about to consume the swing set. Sigh. Shall get on that right away.
----
I Taste A Liquor Never Brewed

I taste a liquor never brewed,
From tankards scooped in pearl;
Not all the vats upon the Rhine
Yield such an alcohol!

Inebriate of air am I,
And debauchee of dew,
Reeling, through endless summer days,
From inns of molten blue.

When the landlord turn the drunken bee
Out of the foxglove's door,
When butterflies renounce their drams,
I shall but drink the more!

Till seraphs swing their snowy hats,
And saints to windows run,
To see the little tippler
Leaning against the sun! -- E. Dickinson

in what appears to be pale yellow.  This is a hyacinth hybrid ordered last year at the half price sale from Bluestone. What is  growing behind is a tiny start of "Arabella," the clematis.  I hope she will drape herself over the raw stump of black oak removed about one year ago.   Nearby is a whisp of a Pinxterbloom  azalea.  See her arms akimbo, shell pink blossoms aboard?  In the mid background are May apples and lily of the valley and a pink azalea remnant dating from the 50s.  Perhaps filtered sun will help.

This is the best hymn for gardeners, this day.

Now the Green Blade Rises (words by John Crum to Noël Nou­ve­let, 15th Cen­tu­ry French mel­o­dy)

Now the green blade rises from the buried grain,
Wheat that in the dark earth many years has lain;
Love lives again, that with the dead has been:
Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green.

In the grave they laid Him, Love Whom we had slain,
Thinking that He’d never wake to life again,
Laid in the earth like grain that sleeps unseen:
Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green.

Up He sprang at Easter, like the risen grain,
He that for three days in the grave had lain;
Up from the dead my risen Lord is seen:
ove is come again, like wheat that springs up green.

When our hearts are saddened, grieving or in pain,
By Your touch You call us back to life again;
Fields of our hearts that dead and bare have been:
Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green.