A towhee by the springhouse sings an inverted version of his usual song. The first purple bergamot is in bloom—a court jester’s absurd hat.
bergamot
September 3, 2011
A hummingbird buzzes into the garden, and I follow her bill to the last bergamot flower’s four thin flagons. A truck clatters past.
July 24, 2011
Overcast and quiet. A silver-spotted skipper drinks from the bergamot, threading the thin purple tubes with its proboscis and leaning in.
July 2, 2011
A pair of bindweed trumpets side-by-side. Nearby, an Oswego tea plant wrapped in webbing swarms with baby spiders no bigger than asterisks.
February 8, 2011
Last night’s wet snow sticks here and there—blank spaces on the wind’s map. One of the 50-odd bergamot heads still wears a toque blanche.
July 24, 2010
Three hummingbirds circle the blowsy remains of the bergamot at sunrise. One lands on a bare twig and grooms her breast feathers.
June 28, 2010
The bergamot is beginning to open, a wash of purple spreading from inner bracts to adjacent leaves as if heralding the rise of a purple sun.
June 25, 2010
The first beebalm’s forked, scarlet tongues. Nearby on a still-green bergamot bud, a netwing beetle’s antennae test the sudden sunlight.
July 23, 2009
Come hummingbird and bring some glitter to this damp gray morning, buzz around the bergamot, pizzazz at the beebalm’s one bedraggled bloom.
August 11, 2008
A hummingbird checks me out before visiting the bergamot, and again afterwards. Then she zips down to the stream for the briefest of drinks.
July 30, 2008
A bumblebee working the bergamot clambers over a green shield bug that’s rooted to its straw, a tiny leaf swelling on a sap-filled stem.
July 22, 2008
Cool and misty—everything drips. A bumblebee clings to the underside of a bergamot bract; on the topside, an equally motionless ant.
July 17, 2008
A hummingbird does a quick circuit of the bergamot, then zips across the road to check out the limp orange tubes from yesterday’s daylilies.
July 9, 2008
In the side garden, the first bergamot is in bloom, purple dreadlocks shooting from a dusty inflorescence and a necklace of purpled green.