I’ve been away from the blog for a bit. I had a mitral valve replaced in my heart and am 8 weeks this side of the surgery. I am so happy to have a properly functioning heart and to return (though gradually) to my former life but in better shape. There will be more about that.
But I wanted to let you know that one of our activities is going over to our neighbor’s deck (or our neighbor coming over to ours) to have a glass of wine and watch the sun set. Since the wine includes cheese, Big Guy and Little Guy celebrate the activity with dancing and rolling about the grass. Once they tire of the reverie they pull up a chair to the table watching the sun with us. Or, sometimes, they join in the social nature of the conversation.
Husband began a conversation with an introduction to Henry James which immediately sparked up Big Guy’s ears. He had to have a say. His remarks were amazingly appropriate. Appropriate enough that I share them with you. Enjoy!
Magical gathering this morning. You should have heard the singing! They were blooming outside my study window. Never noticed them before. But named them Hosta Angels. Aren’t they great?
A dim thrum of cicadas plays in the background. My once lush garden has become leggy, leaves brown in spots. Most years the grass is burned but this year we’ve had more rain. Still, the yards are not plush green.
My thought: the season’s unraveling. The Anglo-Saxons called August Weod-monath (weed month) because vegetation grows out of hand. My yard too. I’m about to give up trying.
In the afternoon the sun seems low, the shadows long. There’s a hint of aging, a waning of the season. We used to call August the ‘dog days’ hot and dry. Dogs sleep in the shade keeping cool. Everywhere a ‘tiredness’ abounds. There’s no energy in August.
So the mind flies away to next year’s garden: hostas to divide, a few perennials to plant for next year. Late bloomers, so this time will be filled with its own flowers
AND
the coming of Autumn! A wisp of longing. There’s a beauty in it. A fresh smell of wet leaves and color that’s alert and bright.
“Whilst August yet wears her golden crown,
Ripening fields lush- bright with promise;
Summer waxes long, then wanes, quietly passing
Her fading green glory on to riotous Autumn.”
- Michelle L. Thieme, August’s Crown
August is a difficult month to center oneself. It’s a month of ‘mixed’ losses and blessings. And of preparation. TS Eliot may have said ‘April is the cruellest month‘
APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
But August is the most poignant. Children return to school. Soon school buses will move through darkness. At the same time that farmers prepare the harvest. Tomatoes everywhere. And apples, and hay. But the Hosta’s are giving up the ghost.
“Yes, long shadows go out
from the bales; and yes, the soul
must part from the body:
what else could it do?
The men sprawl near the baler,
too tired to leave the field.
They talk and smoke,
and the tips of their cigarettes
blaze like small roses
in the night air. (It arrived
and settled among them
before they were aware.)
The moon comes
to count the bales,
and the dispossessed–
Whip-poor-will, Whip-poor-will
–sings from the dusty stubble.
These things happen. . .the soul’s bliss
and suffering are bound together
like the grasses. . .
The last, sweet exhalations
of timothy and vetch
go out with the song of the bird;
the ravaged field
grows wet with dew.”
They’re a group of guys, maybe 30 something who work hard for a living climbing and downing trees. They were here last year to take an ominous branch off an elm as well as to take down 10 ash trees dead and de-barked (the emerald ash borer making its way through Ohio).
So the limb came down, last year that is, the elm limb, and the guy spotting on the ground waved his arms about and everyone alerted to note a nest fell as well. The guy up in the tree said, ‘Well, that’s what happens. It’s the bad side of this job’.
I recall the spotter carrying the nest in his cupped palms to the side of the house in such a curiously protective way.
Later, I found the nest and the sadness, one baby dead, the other, however, alive. I removed the nest to higher place on the side of the house and quickly left as two cardinals came looking for their babies. One, I had buried. But the cardinals flitted about so, I wish I had not buried it until later. They were distressed not able to find it. Then their attention regrouped and they flitted about the living. Until one day the living took wing, fell to the ground and they shuttled it to a bush where I saw it take flight.
Same tree guys here this year downing the ash next to the elm. Among themselves they recall the nest coming down with the elm limb. I said it was a cardinal family. They said ‘Cardinal? Aw…..’ Cardinals are really family birds, you see. But, I said, one lived and one died. The spotter, same guy, said – ‘one died’? Then yelled, ‘One died!’
But the guy up in the tree responded with, ‘One lived!’
The earthbound man (the spotter) grieved over loss. But the man in the tree (riding Heavenward as Frost might say) saw the way. And I repeated the phrase to myself: ‘One lived!’
An article in the Toledo Blade says this is Emerald Ash Borer Awareness Week. Last year we had 10 ash trees removed from our property – this year 5 more – that’s 15. Because our location is prime location for the emerald ash borer.
Emerald Ash Borer (Agrilus Planipennis), an ash tree-killing insect from Asia, was identified in Ohio in 2003. The department has developed a response plan, battling the pest through detection, regulation, and education to protect the state’s more than 3.8 billion ash trees.
EAB kills ash trees within three to five years of infestation. Adults are dark metallic green, 1/2 inch in length and 1/8 inch wide, and fly only from mid-May to September. Larvae spend the rest of the year developing beneath the bark.
To date, infestations have been identified in Allen, Auglaize, Butler, Clermont, Cuyahoga, Defiance, Delaware, Erie, Fairfield, Franklin, Fulton, Hamilton, Hancock, Hardin, Henry, Huron, Licking, Logan, Lorain, Lucas, Mahoning, Marion, Medina, Mercer, Miami, Montgomery, Ottawa, Paulding, Portage, Putnam, Sandusky, Seneca, Union, Van Wert, Warren, Wayne, Williams, Wood, and Wyandot counties.
To reduce the risk of the insect moving to unifested parts of the state, the department has also placed five additional counties to the quarantine list: Champaign, Crawford, Darke, Preble, and Shelby.
The loss of 15 trees over the course of one year has changed the entire eco-system of our yard. Planted as a shade garden, the yard’s hosta patches wilt, the ferns do not thrive, and mosquitoes launch from the large cavities remaining where the trees once were.
And there are at least 20 more ash trees along the creek bed on the Three Meadows ease way that lines our property alone. We are seeing the total eradication of a tree group here in Perrysburg.
Planted rosemary, Italian basil, mounding basil, cilantro. Over the years, I’ve had good results growing these few. They are great with lamb, tomatoes, pizzas. We’re limited here with no area of the yard in full sun. We have one plant that winters over (if we bring it inside) – our Bay bush with enough leaves to last a life time though such a small bush.
"Just Sayin'" As an expression is most often used at the end of a rant or at the end of a suggestion ameliorating a hot pitch with a shrug and an I don't care. Of course the speaker cares but in the span of life she'd rather point out the issue than make a life's crusade out of it. Not that a life's crusade couldn't be merited and not that the thing itself isn't a real pita but, really, one has to move on. "Just sayin'"
Enjoy!
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