Myrtle, speedwell, bittercress: my garden is a crashed party of uninvited blooms. But as Orwell noted, spring in general is illicit.
myrtle
2/18/2012
The sun glints off periwinkle leaves in the yard where snow has just melted. All sounds come from a great distance: crow, woodpecker, train.
10/11/2011
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.
9/1/2011
Mid-morning storm. A fox squirrel lopes through the patch of invasive myrtle, a slow flame the rain can’t quench.
4/21/2011
Even the invaders’ spring is late: barberry, lilac, multiflora rose just now leafing out, the hated myrtle purpling what used to be a lawn.
11/25/2010
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.
10/30/2010
Now that summer’s past, the cardinal has gone back to harassing her reflection. The frost-whitened myrtle bed. A barberry turned to flame.
2/20/2010
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?