Something glitters on a tansy stalk next to the porch: the hard foam surface of a praying mantis egg case. A tiny spider dangles alongside.
tansy
7/29/2012
Tiny ants are digging holes in the tansy flowers—yellow eyes with seething black pupils. A single-propeller plane: the sound of a clear day.
7/28/2011
Rain. An earwig perches on a tansy flower with its head thrust into one of the yellow buttons, motionless as a toker, empty calipers aloft.
7/19/2011
Too humid for clothes, too buggy for bare skin. An enormous yellow bee-fly circles the tansies once, then zooms over to investigate my ear.
7/13/2011
The incremental opening of the tansy flowers seems nearly complete. Two of the yellow heads are dotted with small brown shield bugs.
12/4/2010
Snowflakes sail past like far-flung voyagers. On the otherwise lifeless tansy stalks, a green sprig harbors a single, yolk-colored bloom.
11/4/2010
Rain and fog. A squirrel strips water from its head with a lightning-quick motion of its front paws. The dark dead eyestalks of the tansy.
8/30/2010
A gray squirrel nibbles on tansy leaves—how odd!—then comes onto the porch and stares at me from two feet away with dark unreadable eyes.
7/13/2010
Tansy blooms beside the porch. Black ants and harvestmen wander the allegedly insecticidal leaves; only the yellow flowers remain untouched.