I was gone for a weekend, and the heat and rain pulled the last of middle spring down on top of everything. I look around and try to understand: the changes that have taken place, and I form a litany of events: And I recite the phenomena: the early yellow tulips gone, the mid-season tulips full, the yellow daffodils gone, the bicolor and white daffodils still strong.
The fruit trees are dropping their petals and forming fruit. Peonies are tall and just beginning to come undone; some hostas are leafing now, others just emerging, bluebells in the back yard and the alley all blue, day lily foliage up to two feet tall, Asiatic and oriental lilies to three inches.
Jeanie’s fern garden is coming back with at least five varieties emerged, the other ferns tall as the peonies. There are a few lilac blossoms along the south garden, waterleaf growing tall around the pond, bamboo piercing the ground, some (like the alley knotweed) up to my waist, hops tangling around the tall decorative grasses, garlic mustard budded, a profusion of violets and dandelions in the grass, allium, Indian hyacinths and wood hyacinths budded – ready to replace the daffodils, weeds getting out of hand throughout the more neglected garden patches, a snowball viburnum seen across the street, bittersweet starting to leaf in the alley, a fledgling dove perched above it.
And so what am I to do with all of this? A religious litany of names would have some spiritual, transcendent meaning. It would be a calling forth of powers. Maybe if I name what I see here, then I am calling forth powers, too.
This is Bill Felker with Poor Will’s Almanack. I’ll be back again next week with notes for the first week of late spring. In the meantime, make a litany. Call forth the spirits and the powers.
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