After the promise and optimism of spring fades, summer’s lazy ennui creeps in, the days lasting longer than feel normal, the sun’s intensity relentlessly sucking moisture from the body, high clouds scitter across the sky, the possibility of rain still weeks, or months, away.
Hummingbird season is in full swing now. They frequent the feeders and summer blooms, lucifers, snapdragons, and roses, bickering and bullying each other for sweet dominance. Who knew these little packages of feathers and energy could be so Trumpian-tyrannical and vindictive? Little descendants of dinosaurs, indeed.
Roscoe has found his favorite spot(s) in the sun. Meanwhile, the tomato vines explode in deep green hues, fruit suddenly multiplying throughout, the plants’ familiar odor reminding one of past summers, reds and yellows bursting through from thick tangled vines. Frogs and snakes emerge to soak in the sun. Grasshoppers, beetles, and myriad unidentifiable flying insects float in the shimmering warmth. Snails slime through the grass.
Spring’s flowers-tulips, locus, and gardenia-have given way to summer blossoms, daisies, black-eyed Susans, and blanket flowers. Sunflowers reach for the sky and lilies exclaim, “Look at me, look at me!” And the ever-present, seemingly indestructible dandelions (even after repeated mowings), their resilient stalks, reaching and yellow-tipped, spring ever skyward, releasing their myriad parachute seeds as summer’s last gasp.
It all soon fades, flowers and leaves droop a bit more, the energy and promise of spring dissipating day by day. Summer’s end creeps around imperceptibly until one day in mid-August the garden looks tired, dust covers the snarled vines, the last remaining blossoms dropping desiccated petals. Radiant multicolored dahlias issue forth as if spring had sprung, their blooms nonetheless signaling another summer’s last days.
The summer ends, and it is time
To face another way. Our theme
Reversed, we harvest the last row
To store against the cold, undo
The garden that will be undone.
We grieve under the weakened sun
To see all earth’s green fountains dried,
And fallen all the works of light.
Wendell Berry, The Summer Ends
More later…
(All photographs @ Mark Caicedo/PuraVida Photography)
What a feeling here. Thanks for sharing these with us. Love them.