rain...
rain...
Came down...
down...
down...
...and brought us strip-ed frogs.
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It's been a pretty dismal day or two, with no real sunshine. Tonight the solar lights in the yard are dim, if lit at all. Fortunately, we're enjoying a wealth of flowers from the yellow side of the color wheel, all dressed like that guy in the Sun costume in those Jimmy Dean commercials.
I love the way the spiderwort makes this nice blue speckled background for these daylilies. Maybe next time I won't be sleepy enough to miss plucking off that dead blossom before I snap the picture.
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Was up pretty late last night (reading the new Wonder Woman #1, as well as some other great superhero fare, the Justice League collection, Identity Crisis. In both cases, for a thrilling new look at old characters, you can hardly do better.). And now I'm wondering just which bird it is that sings so prettily at such an early hour.
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As much as I enjoy the spiderwort as a background for the yellow daylilies, I like them even better close-up.
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I find myself thinking a lot about this plant's other name, widows tears, and it almost bothers me to call them that, they are so numerous. And look at the way the water droplets hang on their petals; it's the right name. I wonder where the name came from. Did they grow in the torn fields of Gettysburg, like the poppies of Flanders Field? And then I'm thinking about the gardens of the widows of 911 and our American services...and I imagine, too, the torn fields and cities of Iraq. And I realize I feel better contemplating the Civil War connection...since at least I can take some comfort from the past knowing our country recovered from those tough times. But nothing about war makes any sense. Perhaps they were named by women whose husbands were lost to the sea...and so it goes.
It's just easier to call them spiderwort.
In the back garden, the golden yarrow has spread wide with wet heavy blooms, and I love the way it spills through this corner of the back garden.
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Nearby, a pale orange calendula glows in lieu of the sun.
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Some wild daisies have cuddled up to a small santolina plant, its tiny yellow buds making a constellation behind them.
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The rain has not deterred the ants from their annual business of worrying open the blossoms of the peonies, in their search for sweet nectar.
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Em and I were both glad for a lightening of the rain late this morning.
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She loves to be the prettiest flower in the garden, but she hates being wet more.
There was some kind of waterfowl on the pond this morning, a duck, I think. He was well-concealed in the pickerel weed and did a splash-and-dash exit when I appeared on the pond shore. I was gaping after him in vain for some identifying marks, my camera hanging unused at my side. This shot was taken a moment later.
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It's no real surprise, with so much rain, but I still find it fascinating to see how the water has risen along this fallen tree over the spring. The frog chorus out here is more impressive each night. With it rising so, it's no wonder some of them decided to make the short trip to our little koi pond.
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What a bother it must be, if you are a shore-nesting bird...and the water rises unexpectedly. It can't be fun rebuilding a nest or relocating eggs or youngins...but they must do it, I imagine. Without doppler radar, I wonder if they have any advance warning of such things, or if they just wake up and go "Hey, it's raining...a lot!"
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And I suppose there's a lesson in there somewhere for us, in these early days of the Hurricane Season of Ought-Six.
Siberian iris. Posted by Picasa
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