The Garden of the Seasons: Let's All Worship the Sun in June! The Plants Are Showing Us How

Spring has proved a very strong season for flowering plants this year. The flowers that grow in the spring, of course, do just that. But this year they have done it extremely well. 

Here's an album of growing days this spring, now that the sun has reached its zenith for another year, 2022. We can't say that much has gone well for human beings in this country, or many of the others, this year. But those purveyors of beauty, spring flowers, have held up their end. 

We have, in our midst, the "plant kingdom." It's an old term, but maybe we should take it seriously and recognize the prior rights of green creatures to flourish and grow. Where in the scheme of thing do we humans belong? We don't live in a forest any more. But many of us do live amid the urban forest. And many of us possess little patches of green we can all our own and cause (or try to cause) them to flourish.

My wife, Anne, and I live in a piece of Earth called Quincy, Mass. Here's some of what's been growing there this spring.                                                                                                                                                                                                                          In June                               

Achillea, or Yarrow, gives us big yellow flowers.

Lady's Mantle, delicate flowers in early June.

White Peony blossoms in June, even in this sheltered and too shady spot.

These red roses blossom on a very old vine. It was here when we arrived almost 20 years ago, but barely bloomed. It needs fertilizing and repeated pruning to keep it going strong. 

Lamium, or "Spotted Dead Nettle" is low, delicate groundcover, lovely when in flower.

The flag Iris need attention too. When their rhizomes feel crowded they stop flowering. 

Icelandic Poppies, a fleeting pleasure.

This Wigelia blooms strongly though it's getting crowded by a neighboring Japanese red maple.

This Korean Lilac blooms copiously in May.                                                        

 The Siberian Iris makes a lovely blossom, again in May.

Before opening fully, these shapely Lilac blossoms have a strong color. 

Columbine, an early May bloomer. 

This small tree, a Viburnum, is called "Summer Snowflake." It bloomed in May,

The low Phlox, above, required getting close to, to appreciate. It starts blooming in April. 

These Hyacinth bloomed under the Boxwood hedge in April. 

Before most garden plants had made presence known, these Daffodils were up and blooming. Some of the earliest flowered in March. 

Poems of the Season: Lyrics on the Subjects of Spring, Trees, and Summer -- Wow, Three of My Favorite Things!

I've been busy in June. Our son Saul got married on June 4, to Emma Siegel, perfect ceremony 

in a perfect place, the Tanglewood Music Center, in Lenox, Mass. 

Then I got Covid, and took about a week of sleeping a lot and otherwise taking it easy to 

make sure I was well and posed no danger to anybody else. 

Then we went to another wedding. (So far OK.)

So I've been slow to post notice of my poems in the June edition of Verse-Virtual, the monthly 

journal of the poetry community I am happily part of. 

My poems this month address subjects that mean a lot to me and, one hopes, to everyone 

else: spring, trees, and summer.

The Thing About Spring begins this way:

Once more the world, the landscape,

the place, the thing – everything that we are not

greens up, like a laugh in the heart of a 
     creature in love 
Something is loving the world

Once again people do not entirely matter 
The slaughter of the innocents enacted in this or that 
     corner of the world 
is not, to all appearances, the only story
Once more, before our eyes the face of The Other 

     changes, the object of perception 
What do the philosophers make of this?
Do they say – like us? – the eyes of my eyes
may now be freshly engaged, transfixed,
that the miracle has shaken the grip 
     of our disbelieving heart?

...

To read the remainder of this poem, and my other poems, "Heroes of the Arboretum" and

"The Truth About Summer," and find your way to the rest of this issue,

here's the link June 2022