You never know what we'll churn up in cleaning a stall
This time of year, it’s off for mums. This is, especially, New England. It’s all part of the look.
My wife has her favorite nursery, Bluebell, in Lee. They really know the quality of what they carry. The way a good bookstore does.
So where are you headed? And why?
over the kitchen, one black walnut is bare
the other’s just beginning to turn yellow
10 pumpkins wait beside the driveway
even before I collect squashes and gourds
from the garden
autumn touches, make my Lady of Spices happy
chrysanthemums and a few poppies
reset to barrels and pots around the barn and kitchen entry
the mums in the barrels so gorgeous
next to the pumpkin-filled wheelbarrow
the harvest in a wheelbarrow – eggplants, too
or vines in the compost
our blooming cardinal flower
makes me wish more had survived, even just one, to remind us
poem copyright 2016 by Jnana Hodson
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For more of my home and garden poems, click here.
Am I really a squirrel, as my wife suggests?
Sometimes I wonder.
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For more on my poetry collection and others, click here.
This is the time of year when we start looking for big asters.
Not the collectors, but the flowers. The ones with only one S in the middle.
more squirrels than girls – and there are a lot of girls in this neighborhood
two horny squirrels on a tree
neighbors report a large groundhog … where are those dogs?
possum … how funny they look, running
their back arches, and both ends drop
nearly to the ground
how laborious!
a possum in the bottom of one of our plastic barrels
furrier than I expected
turn the cylinder on its side, still takes a while
for the critter to move off … injured? stunned? no idea
a young porcupine crossing Hill Street four doors down …
a neighbor watching from the stoop …
next night, a dead adult porcupine in the street
on our apron by the back door
a small snake, whip motion,
ever so slowly
Rachel awakens me
for a scurrying, gnawing noise
inside the wall, beside our heads
in the morning, I realize we haven’t heard
the house sparrows nesting in the eaves overhead, either
none of our plans come off as planned
but we keep readjusting
poem copyright 2016 by Jnana Hodson
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For more of my home and garden poetry, click here.
Reprise
The amount of wildlife in our yard continually impresses me,
especially compared to Oakdale Avenue or Woodbine.
The abundance of squirrels, of course, and possible rats
but also skunks, opossums, the groundhog can be added in
plus snakes and insects.
We must be doing something right, or just be in the right location.
A first: amid a throng of blue jays chasing a crow, a mockingbird:
was its nest raided or threatened?
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For more on my home and garden poetry, click here.
So much yellow, this time of summer! Sunflowers, finches, goldenrod, corn drenched in butter. Banks of black-eyed susans, too.
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For my collected garden poems and more, click here.
Maybe I’ve been too involved watching the surreal political scene that’s unfolding in America, but that hasn’t precluded us from enjoying the usual sequence of developments in the garden — things I’ve blogged about in previous years. We’ve enjoyed waves of (wild) dandelions followed by crops of asparagus, lettuce, and spinach, and now the sugar snap peas and raspberries. Maybe I’ve been too busy trying to stay ahead of the weeds, repairing some of our raised beds, even tackling a small patio space between the kitchen and driveway to report on any of it, but in general things are looking good and tasting even better.
One thing that always amazes us is the popularity of the bird feeder in summer. You’d think with all of the natural, wild food sources, the birds would ignore the feeder. Instead, they become voracious, going through as much of my grain and seed in a couple of days as they do in nearly a month of deep cold and snow. Yes, there are those babies to feed, but this still has us shaking our heads in wonderment. OK, we do live in a city, and anything we can do to enhance the avian population has its pluses. Still, we’d like them to remain independent and turn to our supply when things are tough rather than bountiful.
Feeders, I should note, fuel their own band of human supporters — along with topics of conversations. Squirrels are only one of the menaces.
Each spring, when I was editing the newspaper, I’d have to chuckle when the state Fish and Game Department issued its annual bring-your-feeders-in alert. We had enough friends who lived in the country to tell us — and sometimes show us the damage — of what could happen when the bears come out of hibernation and start roaming. The bruins will rip a feeder to shreds, sometimes a half-mile from the scene of the crime. (Well, our dentist had photos of the hairy ones at work — five days in a row of bears visiting the feeders on his deck right outside the kitchen overlooking the lake.) Living in town, though, I’ve never considered us at risk.
But now? A neighbor saw a bear yesterday just four or five blocks from us as it crossed a busy street just north of downtown. I know it’s a rare though not unknown phenomenon, but it’s still news. For now, I’m shaking my head and hoping the neighborhood dogs are on guard. Their barking should do the trick, if need be. So I’m told.
It started when we had some trees removed – the box elder that was shading a third of the Swamp, another shading the kitchen garden, and then a dead elm. We kept the flakes from the cutters’ chipper, rather than having them go to the dump. Repeatedly since, when we hear tree cutters in the neighborhood, we ask if they could give us the truckload, and they oblige, grateful to be spared the city dump charge.
Those chips work great for lining the pathways through our garden or around the yard. Eventually, of course, they decompose and enrich and soften our clay soil. It’s just another of the many lessons we’ve had in assuming an old house and barn and reclaiming a garden and grounds. I’m glad I’ve collected those stories, an indication how far we’ve come over the years, as well as reminders how far we have yet to go.
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For more home and garden poems, click here.
As the title of my poetry collection about gardening goes, There Is No Statuary in Our Garden Except for the Plastic Spacemen Occasionally Surfacing, working the soil here turns up many surprises. Bits of broken glass and metal, definitely, and endless rocks.
A few weeks ago I came across a wiggly something I first thought might have been a petrified snake or, a bit later, a skink. As I extracted its clay-encrusted fullness and pulled bits away, I slowly realized what I had was a three-inch-long tail to a plastic ‘gator or croc’, the body and snout adding about two more inches.
Forget trying to take a photo. Even cleaned up, it’s hard to make out.
I’m sure this was never one of our kids’ toys, which leaves a question of just how long since there were other children living on the property and then just what use they made of this stretch of the side of the house we call the Swamp.
Maybe they knew something after all.
Jnana's Red Barn 