Myrtle, speedwell, bittercress: my garden is a crashed party of uninvited blooms. But as Orwell noted, spring in general is illicit.
myrtle
February 18, 2012
The sun glints off periwinkle leaves in the yard where snow has just melted. All sounds come from a great distance: crow, woodpecker, train.
October 11, 2011
Mist and quarry noise. In my four-day absence, green has drained from the trees, and the aliens in my yard have put up three blue flowers.
September 1, 2011
Mid-morning storm. A fox squirrel lopes through the patch of invasive myrtle, a slow flame the rain can’t quench.
April 21, 2011
Even the invaders’ spring is late: barberry, lilac, multiflora rose just now leafing out, the hated myrtle purpling what used to be a lawn.
November 25, 2010
Steady rain, and the temperature just two degrees above freezing. In the herb bed, the pale blue wheel of a blossom on the invasive myrtle.
October 30, 2010
Now that summer’s past, the cardinal has gone back to harassing her reflection. The frost-whitened myrtle bed. A barberry turned to flame.
February 20, 2010
Fresh excavations in the yard—a puzzle. Have the deer developed a taste for myrtle, the green of its leathery leaves under all that snow?