dame’s-rocket

Sunday May 07, 2017

Dave Bonta 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.‬

Dave Bonta September 18, 2015 1

The rising sun illuminates old spiderwebs in the eaves, littered with insect body parts. Below, the flamboyant bones of dame’s-rocket.

Dave Bonta 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.

Dave Bonta 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.

Dave Bonta 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.

Dave Bonta 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.

Dave Bonta December 19, 2013 1

Dimples stipple the snow below the porch where icicles dripped. Sparrow tracks circle a dame’s-rocket seed-head bent down by the last storm.

Dave Bonta June 1, 2013

The chickadee flies in with food and flies out with a fecal sac. In the meadow, yellow iris like a tour group in a crowd of dame’s-rocket.

Dave Bonta June 27, 2012 2

Next to the old dog statue, the sun catches one of the last dame’s-rocket blossoms—a faded purple footnote to a once extensive text.

Dave Bonta October 31, 2010

Below the porch, a dot of pink: a very late dame’s-rocket blooming the day after a hard frost. A brown creeper inspects a small walnut tree.