Breezy and cool. The briefest of showers comes tapping on the roof. A tall dame’s rocket sways in front of the porch, all its flowers converted into needle-thin pods.
dame’s-rocket
June 10, 2023
Breezy and clear. A deer steps out of the woods, grunting softly to collect her fawn, who comes leaping through the purple pom-poms of dame’s-rocket.
May 29, 2023
Memorial Day. The dame’s-rocket lining the driveway is at its height of purple. A hen turkey at the woods’ edge clucks and calls. Summer’s here.
November 7, 2021
A scrap of hornets’ gray paper by my chair. Sunlight catches a dead dame’s-rocket below the porch, seed pods reduced to pure gesture.
June 18, 2021
High, hazy clouds dilute the sunlight. A chipping sparrow lands sideways on a tall dame’s-rocket stalk, singing as it bows under his weight.
June 1, 2021
Sun through thin clouds. Dame’s-rocket in the meadow keeps growing to extend the bloom: a slowly rising, purple mist.
May 23, 2021
The dame’s-rocket is at its height; my overgrown front yard is the equal of any garden. The catbird seems to concur.
June 9, 2020
Silver-spotted skippers chase over dame’s-rocket. A catbird balancing on a dead weed stalk plucks a green bug from a blade of grass.
May 7, 2017
The first dame’s-rocket are coming out: dabs of purple among the banks of winter cress and garlic mustard. Basically, it’s rocket season.
September 18, 2015
The rising sun illuminates old spiderwebs in the eaves, littered with insect body parts. Below, the flamboyant bones of dame’s-rocket.
July 8, 2015
Autumn has come to the dame’s-rocket in the yard, leaves turning orange and burgundy as the seedpods yellow like needle-thin fingernails.
June 11, 2015
Silver-spotted skippers work the last dame’s-rocket, and a day-time cricket begins to chirp. I slap myself in the chest to kill a mosquito.
June 1, 2015
The dame’s-rocket in my yard has reached the late baroque stage of flowering, clumps as chubby as cherubs flying out from the main stalks.
May 18, 2015
It’s wild mustard season, the yard dotted with purple dame’s-rocket, white garlic mustard, and among the cattails a riot of yellow rocket.