wild garlic – The Morning Porch/Patio

Thursday August 04, 2016

Dave Bonta August 4, 2016

The wild garlic has all gone to seed, heads bowed with the weight of their descendants. A tiny ichneumon patrols the porch, wings a-quiver.

Dave Bonta July 15, 2016

The continual, three-syllable chatter of goldfinches. Wild garlic stalks have begun to straighten and the heads to shed their white masks.

Dave Bonta July 8, 2016

The crowds of wild garlic in my yard have uncoiled their white heads and seem to peer in all directions like bewildered cranes.

Dave Bonta August 8, 2015 3

A dragonfly with shimmering, banded wings and an electric blue abdomen lands on a garlic seed-head, falls still and nearly disappears.

Dave Bonta July 29, 2015

The feral garlic top-heads have split their skins, unveiling clusters of beady eyes. The sun’s a glowing smudge. It’s going to be hot.

Dave Bonta June 28, 2015

Garlic heads in the yard are beginning to uncurl—curved arrows pointing in all directions. But the rain still follows its straight road.

Dave Bonta February 7, 2015

A gray morning. I notice, silhouetted against the snow, how all the heads in each patch of wild garlic are bent in the same direction.

Dave Bonta February 7, 2014

Just two wild garlic heads remain in the yard, dangling on their stalks like sad, gray Christmas ornaments above the glittery white.

Dave Bonta July 7, 2012 1

A fawn among the wild garlic: the white tops continue in the spots of its coat. Later, a hummingbird at the beebalm: matching red throats.

Dave Bonta July 8, 2011 11

In the yard, the horde of wild garlic heads have begun to rise from their private ruminations and aim their long beaks together at the sky.