At home:
Everything that's blooming seems to be purple or white: Shasta daisies, chives, dame's rocket, Canada violet, spiderwort. Or pink: cranesbill geranium, wild geranium, coral bells, bleeding heart. Well, all right, and there's the columbine.
The Henry Kelsey rosebush is about to burst into bloom; it is covered with buds and most of them show color. One or two on the top have unfolded a tentative petal. I lay this tentativeness at the feet of the lovely cool weather. There is generally nothing tentative about that bush. I am ridiculously pleased that I got several canes trained over the rose arch. They prefer to wave wildly in the air and snatch at passersby.
When I was pruning the bush, I left the stepladder with the bottle of white glue atop it outside for an hour or so while I rested. Lydy wanted to know if I was gluing the rosebush to the arch, and opined that this would not work. I am sure that it wouldn't. Not with this bush.
The roses of York and Lancaster also have buds, but no color yet.
I thought the tradescantia (the spiderwort) had eaten my Madonna lilies, but they are there, looking retarded and droopy. I watered them. They were fed earlier, but maybe the spiderwort stole it.
I have dozens of peony buds, each attended by a bevy of ants.
I refuse to report on the weeds, though they are winning all races at the moment.
On Sunday the first of June Eric and I went to Afton. We had meant to go to Carver, but Eric had been to Afton the week before and heard kingfishers, and when I told him that Raphael and I had seen a kingfisher at Afton, nothing would do but that we return and look for kingfishers.
Unfortunately, the river was full of loud motorboats. It was like being part of a gigantic pinball game where motorboats were released from some infinite source upstream at intervals of about ninety seconds. The river was also quite high, so that the space from which Raphael and I had seen kingfishers was covered; and the beach that was there was filled with people fishing and cavorting.
We took some woodland trails and heard an enormous variety of unfamiliar birdsong, but saw no birds for hours. We had been greeted on our arrival by the sight of a wild turkey, which turned its back on us, giving us a brief profile of its red wattle, and then walked slowly away up the hill, showing its splendid though folded tail to advantage. I was beginning to think that was the only bird we would see.
There was a grand lot of wild geranium, the first Canada anemones, many thriving columbines, and huge slopes of fresh fern. Also way too much poison ivy. But the birds were completely elusive.
Eric had suggested trying the riverside again near sunset and then spending twilight on the upland prairie restoration. This turned out to be a very happy plan. We found a wooden stair down to a scramble of rocks and then a sandspit. There were footprints of dogs and people, but nobody there at that time. The motorboats had stopped roaring by and making the water slap the shore. It was a pretty and peaceful spot, and decorated by a huge swarm of craneflies or something of that nature, dancing in the air and occasionally butting up against one another like airy sumo wrestlers.
Eric saw a great blue heron stalking in the water on the next spit down, which was wooded and still mostly flooded. He handed me the binoculars, and I saw a blue-gray dead spit of wood. No, wait, it was the heron, a glorious bird indeed, bill up, imitating a dead tree. We were also treated to a flurry of fish mouths bobbing to the surface of the water after insects.
Presently we climbed back up the hill, noting the eerie appearance of the wild geranium blossom in the fading light. We caught two sparrows gleaning at the edge of the path near the park office, and went on up the prairie trail as the pink faded in the west. One silent nightjar flashed overhead, and at the same moment a fat-bodied busy-winged bird unfamiliar to us also flew over. We saw a swallow perched on a treetop as well. We went on, hoping for owls or bats, and saw two deer standing still as still in last year's dead golden grass, following us with their eyes. And finally, as we reluctantly turned back so we would not be locked in when the park closed at then, we saw the thin new moon and at the same time fireflies, first only a few spotted by Eric, and then more and more. They were not flying at first, only clinging to grass blades, and we wondered if they had just emerged and climbed up the blades to get used to their new forms.
Pamela
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