My intent was to write a second July post. I assured myself I had time and energy. I did not. How often do we say and say and then it becomes we said, because the time has past.?
And so it is August the first. Or as an acquaintance of mine, who is just learning English calls it Augustus. Which came first in the history of our language–August and thus the child born to a king perhaps emerged ruddy and ready to conquer and thus was named Augustus, or Augustus, perhaps a king so ruddy and ready that persons demonstrating that leadership trait were termed august, and the month named it, blows in so powerfully hot that it, too, was termed this term indicating ruddy and ready to conquer.?
I am growing a rather august vine in my backyard this year, it has enormous leaves, enormous flowers, the non-fruit bearing ones of which I include in my backyard sourced salad and they are succulent! It has been growing and stretching and attaching by tentacles to all manner of grippable surface for a month, and until a couple of days ago, provided me only leaves, vine, flowers, tentacles, and great awe. But then fruit began to grow!! A squash, I think a cucurbita maxima, based on the leaves and flower. If that is so, that means it is a buttercup squash, and it and butternut squash are my favorite!! Here are two photos, one including the first fruit of note. What do you think?
In keeping with the words to here, I am pretty sure this vine insinuated itself into my garden. Its roots are right in the middle of the space in which I tossed wildflower seeds, and so growing around and under and with it are a few daisies, cosmos, and tiny white flowers and tiny pink flowers and others (perhaps next year I will try to learn the names and reasons for the names of some of the wildflowers in my yard, along the rail trails, in the empty urban lots, and jutting from cracks in the sidewalks, among other places). And also ripening among the squash vines are ground cherries, one is actually in the picture above, but short of mastering insertion of pointers to my attached photographs, I could never really direct you to the particular leaves in that photograph that are they. Nevertheless, a delicious fruit. If ever you find some, I recommend partaking.
How, you may ask, in this drought the world is passing through, except, as I write, in Kentucky, am I watering these plants? Every morning I carry out to the backyard my newly collected dehumidifier water, straight up from the 1915 stone walled basement. The miracles of humidity even in this summer of dry, this summer of dry, so dry that my rain barrels rattle emptily.
And the river is low. The mighty Merrimack is mighty, nakedly rocky.
I am on the North Canal walkway, behind the fence my bicycle leans on is the Merrimack rock garden, usually known as a river, floating haplessly above in the background right is the University Avenue Bridge.
So August is begun. Join me as we explore. For why life if not to search, find, learn, love?
whereIwonder&why 