On Wonder

This is the first year I've become lost in the garden, and to some degree I mean physically lost. The smokebushes are 10' tall, the eupatoriums and ironweeds and sunflowers are thick masses, the grasses broad and unfurling their plumes of seed-like earrings / many small chrysalides.

The side of our house gets a half day of light, morning sun. It is a dark, damp place come mid afternoon, with dogwood, ninebark, 'Fineline' buckthorn, spiraea, willow, and crabapple. It is both a simple place in its lack of flowers, and a subtle yet complicated place structurally. For this reason I feel the most secluded and calm here, as do the many tree fogs. Last night I watched as one climbed the gold-leaved smokebush near the top, stopped on a leaf, and seemed to gulp the air. The night before 5 of them were spread on the south wall around the back door, catching insects attracted to the interior light seeping through curtain edges.

Argiope aurantia

A large female garden spider has made a web near the base of a clump river birch, tied fast to verbena and mountain mint. Sometimes I help her out. Fair warning. There are plenty of grasshoppers, and if I'm quick enough I can capture one in the curled palm of my hand. I'll rush over to the web, the grasshopper pinching and scraping at my skin, and toss it to the spider. She sometimes gets to them, but more often than not the grasshoppers work their way out and fall to the ground. But it's fascinating to see her spin a thick Saran Wrap-like film over her prey. Or, our prey. The grasshoppers feast in my garden.

Monarch on Coreopsis tripteris (tall tickseed)

When I got home from teaching yesterday, my wife and I released 7 monarchs (5 more today). One made a mad dash for the sky, the rest flitted and settled on the bald cypress, morning glories, or butterfly bushes. Nearby a preying mantis waited. The skippers and soldier beetles, numbering in the hundreds if not thousands, patrol every last bloom, often resting in my hair or on my shirt. Bumblebees wedge into shriveled up morning glories and thin-lipped turtlehead blooms. Recently, a hummingbird  has begun stopping by an hour or two before dusk to nectar at every last 'Nekan' blue sage bloom.

Bumble bee on Chelone 'Hot Lips'

Ants are harvesting the aphids. Tent caterpillars have invaded the baptisia (it looks like Halloween). A highlighter-yellow goldfinch picks dried coneflower seeds from a blackened stalk.

Soldier beetle pulling itself up to Eupatorium 'Wayside' bloom

Only 1,500 square feet and I think about how much I'm still missing, but know how much I've ceased to miss. Such a small place can become one that is infinite--the purest essence of wonder.