Cool and clear at sunrise, with a sliver of moon like an open parenthesis for something left unsaid. A hummingbird drawn in by purple bergamot sips from the drab white soapwort instead.
soapwort
Every morning, more soapwort blossoms, and the raspberry canes are stretching into new territory. A harvestman stalks across my gray wasteland of a porch.
Another woods-edge maple has gone red. Bouncing bet still blooms beside the porch, four months on.
Sunlight dulled by high haze. A squirrel in the garden grooms its genitals, then pulls a soapwort blossom close for an almost-kiss.
A male hummingbird buzzes in to the bergamot patch, but sips nectar from the soapwort instead. The catbird improvises on a towhee’s tune.
The first bergamots are in bloom, next to the first soapwort. In walnut-tree shade, the permanent shadow of a common yellowthroat’s mask.
In the overgrown garden, two soapwort flowers drip with rain. The small book of haiku I’m reading is perfect for swatting mosquitoes.
Hard rain for less than a minute followed by an hour of dripping, accompanied by a cricket chorus. Pale soapwort flowers glow in the sun.
Cool and quiet. A female hummingbird ignores the bergamot to drink from the soapwort, their plain, pale faces glowing in the weak sunshine.
A scattering of white in my overgrown garden: soapwort, bindweed, fleabane, snakeroot. The sky brightens. A towhee calls from the lilac.
A shimmer in the air thickens into drizzle, dripping from bedraggled rudbeckia petals, limp tubes of bergamot and the crisp, white soapwort.
The rain-drenched soapwort petals are showing a faint wash of pink. Is that any way to age? Evening primrose leaves have turned barn-red.
A hummingbird defending her patch of soapwort buzzes an ovenbird, who walks back and forth on the cherry branches in his big pink feet.
Soapwort, self-heal, mullein, Rudbeckia, butterfly weed: my garden exemplifies the messiness of any organization dominated by volunteers.