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
9/27/2018
Overcast and cool. Birds only call at intervals now. Crickets’ chirps are as small and repetitive as the blossoms on the white heath aster.
9/6/2017
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.
9/21/2016
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.
9/20/2015
Clear and cold after last night’s showers. In the garden, the asters are all pinched shut like collapsed eyes with long, purple lashes.
9/11/2015
Cold and quiet. Under a clearing sky, the New York asters in my garden are finally opening—psychedelic yellow eyes with purple lashes.
11/12/2014
Overcast and cold. On the south side of the house, an aster is still in bloom, its small constellation trembling in the wind.
9/16/2012
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.
12/14/2011
White above, gray below—the reverse of the juncos foraging in the ditch among sedges, tear-thumb and asters, calling in small hard notes.
9/14/2011
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.
9/14/2010
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.
9/12/2010
Rain at last! A gentle tapping on the roof. The parched aster in my garden half-opens its first purple eye.
11/12/2008
Two white-tailed deer leap through the dried goldenrod and asters beyond the springhouse, surfacing, diving—dolphins in a brown sea.
9/26/2008
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.