Catching up post: 5th-10th
The rather ominous looking creature seems to be a fly of the tachinid type. They eat aphids and thrips and their larvae are parasitic on other pests. In seeking to identify it, I found an amazing number of flies that look like other things – bees and wasps, for example. Close up photos make them look very much like science fiction characters or rather, the characters seem to be modeled after flies!
Last month, Gretchen Rubin wrote on one of her Secrets of Adulthood: “Remember to go Outside”.
Nature is a restorative for me. This month, I have determined to go outside every day, there to linger, observe and enjoy and then to store up the beauty or experience in a photograph or two or 10!
From the first five days of the month:
As always, a click on the photo will enlarge it.
July started with the “thunder moon”. Every storm that visits here brings rain, sometimes just a dust settling drizzle, other times it’s a big wash. But always we are grateful for the rains. While we live near a city reservoir, out own precious water comes from our well. 
The rains have brought luxuriant growth to garden plant and weed. Every time I think I have gotten control of a bed – rains come, hidden seeds sprout and I start over. My progress in garden weeding is slow.
With every pending storm, the air stirs the tree tops into a frenzy and when the wildness stops, I am again surprised at how much dead wood has been held in the tree tops, waiting for the shaking down for my exercise routine.
The glorious show of daylily bloom is slowly giving way to green again but these blooms, while few, are stunning – 
and in the background, the Butterfly Bush is beginning its season.
The other week, I mentioned the wild dogwood – cornus alternifolia – Pagoda Dogwood – is my id of it. I neglected to show this bird treat tree in that post. 
The seedling planted itself under a maple tree many years ago. I thought it was a Flowering Dogwood as we have many planted by birds and squirrels. Only as the years went by, I realized the leaves were a bit different. Early, I tried to straighten it, but it chooses to grow leaning out from under a maple to face into the morning sun.
All the quiet, slow, solitary activity of summer days allows me time to tidy my soul as well. Reminiscence and introspection seem to go round with me as peaceable companions in my chores and I learn from them.
My favorite thing to have with early morning wonder time is iced coffee. I’ve been using the Pioneer Woman’s recipe for several years now, Perfect!
It was oppressively hot for several days so I had good excuse for not being outside. Strolling the internet, I came to Martha’s place and found her hints on cleaning shears and knives with white vinegar. It is embarrassing to admit how grungy my tools get, but here is the sad truth 
just a small photo; they are so badly in need. I put on an apron and gathered my supplies and the results were gratifying. A rinse, dry in the sun and lube in the old “joints” and they are ready for work again. 
There is no photo to prove it but I would not make up this terrible news. I was sitting at the kitchen table when something caught my eye and I was so glad the door was closed as the now resident groundhog brushed up against the screen. I think he was not expecting to see me and he turned and run down the path, across the yard and back to the shed, where he perched on the wall and I was glad I could not hear him ranting his displeasure. We are sure he lives underneath the shed and while he does, I don’t go back there. Do you know that Groundhogs can climb trees? And if trees, why not to the top of sheds with trees around them? My nephew said he saw them in trees on his property a few years ago, I hoped he was just joking, but not. If you have an interest in them, here is fascinating information – the thought of them having homes like a mine under my yard is disconcerting.
And now, 
. This may not look like much, but that is a tunnel crafted along the rock path. Now there is one down the other side and more branching off in all directions. Moles.
One of our first years here, we caught one. I thought it was cute. I was the ignorant city girl who grew up with story book animals. I would not let my husband kill it, I thought if he just took it to the very back of our three acres, it would wander happily into the field beyond. It probably did. Where in the way of storybook moles, it was hailed as a returning hero by its brethren who followed him in a great pioneering contingent to fully invade the yard several days later.
Add these to the daily deer who huff at me when I am bold enough to step outside.
To console myself, each day of the heat wave I brought in day lilies for the table. Soothing consolation in each bloom. Distraction too from the pending war on the invaders.
Last September, I wrote about finding seed clusters in the spent Calla Lily blooms. I waited and on October 31, I gathered my harvest. 
Tiny seeds sloughed from corn like coatings. One can find anything on-line but directions are not the same as in person tutoring to me and I was left with this small collection of seeds to protect till spring. I put them in a small cardboard box and while I didn’t forget them, I also didn’t plant them as directed. But on a putter-y kind of day in early June, I sprinkled them in a pot. My little seeds were faithful to their calling to live and sprang up!
They have been growing well and I’ve transplanted them into another pot. Rain and sun will nourish them well.
There are some areas of my life where seeds of faith lie scattered in the soil of my heart. I’m encouraged that like the Calla Lily seeds, these faith seeds are growing good roots.
The Everyday Garden
I usually tidy the garden before I gather the beauty into a photograph. But this first view is like life, it’s all messy with yesterday still hanging about distracting from the beauty of the new day.
It only takes about 5 minutes to tidy away yesterday; the new day’s offering is no longer obscured and the promise of beauty for tomorrow shows beautifully. In the Everyday Garden of my soul, it is much the same. If I will remind myself that His mercy and compassion fail not and are new every morning because He is faithful to care for me, I can let go of yesterday’s beauty and pain. Then the beauty of the new day can unfold.
Storm Season begins
The frequent warnings of storms, flash floods, possible tornadoes, and rip tides become part of the forecast. Storms can be very local with some areas getting very little while others have downpours and hail and flooding.
A week ago, we had a late afternoon of heavy rain. Hubby had decided the forecast was dire enough that he went into town for take-out in case of power failure here. He was back just in time to be inside as the heavens seemed to burst open in darkness. As the evening went on, the rain stopped but an ominous, eerie green light began to show in the windows. Naturally, I went outside!
I have never seen these cloud formations here before nor this color of sky.
My brother tells me that in his part of the country, the green sky signals hail. While we had just a few pea size pieces fall, less than 10 miles away 4 inch hail was a destructive force and flash flooding was destroying property. Ominous clouds indeed. I came in and while later I could see a different glow in the sky.
And the mammutus clouds fade away…
White flowers offer us luminous, glowing life in a garden.
They bring a cooling refreshment to my soul. Many years ago I read about moon gardens – gardens to delight by moonlight.
I have planted many white and light colored flowers to capture the glow as the summer night settles in. Like moonlight itself, there is a kind of comfort from their glow in the dark; fragile beauty lighting the night.
I’ve also learned that some plants only give out their fragrance in the dark hours.
Sometimes the fragrance of love can seem most fragile and exquisite in dark hours too. Even as a long distance watchman, I could hear it, sense the beauty and the fragrance, hear the heart cry as another beloved family member slipped from the darkness of this life into brilliance – luminous, glowing beauty beyond our knowing.
How precious is Your lovingkindness, O God! Therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of Your wings. They are abundantly satisfied with the fullness of Your house,
And You give them drink from the river of Your pleasures. For with You is the fountain of life; In Your light we see light. Psalm 36: 7-9 NKJV
Spring explodes like a paint box come to life; spilling across the browned winter weary landscape. First, the greens come.
I recently learned a new word. Viriditas. My high school Latin teacher would be amazed! Viriditas means “greenness” – vitality, lushness, verdure, fecundity, growth. I am grateful to Mandy for sharing this word and its connection to Abbess Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179). It seems a perfect expression of the living green captured by the soul as the light dances over grass and leaf life.
He makes me lie down in green pastures… He restores my soul.
Many years ago, in an herb gardening book, I read that this 7th century hermit was the patron saint of gardeners, and of course, herbalists. I have often passed by this small statue without realizing that it was not St Francis but rather St Fiacre who is depicted in art with his shovel. His gardens and herbs of legend were used to minister to the sick and visitors of his day and so make him appropriate to this quiet hospital garden.
Misty sunrises, dramatic sunsets, clouds in September skies
Nesting for fall
Crafting
Exploring the yard – any beyond
Receiving gifts
Yard cleanup silly
Anticipating October Drama