Weak sun. The bright blue of New York asters almost lost among the goldenrod. It takes me a moment to place a distant bird call: chicken.
asters
September 27, 2018
Overcast and cool. Birds only call at intervals now. Crickets’ chirps are as small and repetitive as the blossoms on the white heath aster.
September 6, 2017
I cede the porch to the hornets and sit under the portico. The view: a garden full of weeds, a least flycatcher landing briefly on an aster.
September 21, 2016
The asters in my garden are finally opening, purple and gold above new, green growth, the lower leaves all dead from the summer’s drought.
September 20, 2015
Clear and cold after last night’s showers. In the garden, the asters are all pinched shut like collapsed eyes with long, purple lashes.
September 11, 2015
Cold and quiet. Under a clearing sky, the New York asters in my garden are finally opening—psychedelic yellow eyes with purple lashes.
November 12, 2014
Overcast and cold. On the south side of the house, an aster is still in bloom, its small constellation trembling in the wind.
September 16, 2012
From just inside the woods, a bird call I don’t recognize—an anxious couple of notes. The purple asters slowly unclench to an overcast sky.
December 14, 2011
White above, gray below—the reverse of the juncos foraging in the ditch among sedges, tear-thumb and asters, calling in small hard notes.
September 14, 2011
Many of the asters that shut their purple lashes for the night have yet to open, frustrating a honeybee. A squat native bee pushes right in.
September 14, 2010
First rays of sun on the garden, and already a monarch is drinking from the half-opened asters, orange panes of its wings trembling, aglow.
September 12, 2010
Rain at last! A gentle tapping on the roof. The parched aster in my garden half-opens its first purple eye.
November 12, 2008
Two white-tailed deer leap through the dried goldenrod and asters beyond the springhouse, surfacing, diving—dolphins in a brown sea.
September 26, 2008
A large flock of geese somewhere above the clouds. The purple asters in the garden are folded shut like sea anemones with overly long arms.