I love to think of and have done several sketches of the flowers around the Fourth as fireworks- upspringing delphiniums, foaming yarrow- and what’s fun is they come in the red white and blue of our country’s colours. This painting used as the featured image isn’t finished because this year I didn’t have the cobalt blue delphiniums I like, but you get the idea and I can use it again next year.

It’s spring no longer. With the Summer Solstice we’re on to the second half of the year. Wow. The mornings start with watering, about every other day now, after a first walk thru the beds. Gardening is taking a huge amount of time now, and there are so many little chores, which creates anxiety for me because if I can’t do each thing one after the other right in a row I start forgetting and that makes me nuts! With all the improvements and accomplishments going on on the property right now there’s still so much to do to tighten up. This year for the Solstice we have also a near-full moon, a confluence I always appreciate. After a lovely spring we’ve got hot weather this week. The second tier of the perennials is over- irises, peonies, etc. and our amazing perfuming multifloras- gone by the year’s longest day, and the faery flowers of summer solstice- eglantine, bind weed trumpets, cottage pinks, mugwort leaf, St. John’s, mullein, a volunteer foxglove in the bed, grace us with their presence. Had to do a study of these- this isn’t as finished as I’d like but again you get the feel- (painting under the featured image.) The cottage pinks we put in this year are so interesting with their petals making faery lace, and mugwort leaf is equally elven. Chipmunks abound- trying to draw them- a sketch here, a pose there- it’s a lot to ask to do detail-rich recording drawing during such an activity-heavy time but that’s the job! We’re at a point of accomplishment now with all that’s been realised by this point this year. According to our herbal year-format, activity now is the result of actions taken rather than the initiation of such, as seeding leads to harvesting. Of course in our human lives it’s not really like that, but remember, we’re doing this for the poetry of it.         

I mentioned in the last post that I’m thinking differently about the garden, It really should be one giant bird feeder, and when you see goldfinches in the chicory, hummingbirds and Monarchs in the milkweed and so on you really feel it is! With the vegetable plot, there’s been loss after loss, despite my careful moon sign planting, but also possible real bounty with some of the things, and as always more lessons learned. One is- seeds from last year probably won’t germinate unless you’ve preserved them really well! Another is- things put in too small are probably going to get eaten. I’ve got a lot of failures this year- and yet on a fully blooming sunny morning I look around the herber and think, I created this.

Happy Summer, all!

Bird song of the Day: Fixed do-

     Do, dodododo^*fa, fafa vmi