#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream
“But sometimes a native species is just fine in its own purity. Take the black-eyed Susan, for instance. This stalwart of meadows and byways blooms on schedule each year without so much as a coax from anyone. Late summer scenes are always brighter because of this rugged flower.”
Excerpt from GARDENING; The Season Is for the Black-Eyed Susan
By JOAN LEE FAUST SEPT. 14, 1997, New York Times
Today, I wanted to plant more black-eyed Susans. Already, I have many in bloom in my gardens and some in the meadow. I want more. I want to plant them against the green wall of the shed where the pigs used to live. Yesterday I looked for some to buy and didn’t find them. Today, my search continues. But first, we drive to Hospital Road and park to hike the Charles Link Trail on the other riverbank where we have not walked for weeks. There, we belong to crowds of vigorous black-eyed Susans reaching into a cloudless blue sky. We are warm and quiet and happy on this also peaceful side of the river. We follow a brook into the green aura and green, I know, is a natural mood enhancer and I breathe it in and feel the green entering the cells of my skin in a very youthful drink. I am canopied. I am vigorous. It’s a cheerful morning and we drive after our walk to a nursery where I decide I don’t want to pay what they’re asking for the flowers, so I drive more and find the ones I’m looking for and return home and in the hot sun I plant them and some coreopsis I got at a clearance price and I water everything and the task is behind me. So, now I can go indoors and pay attention to my writing life. After a late afternoon swim in the pond with a friend my husband and I have dinner on the deck and we talk and talk and stroll across the meadow to the river, to our bench, to our dreaming imagination place where we feel we’ve made sacred ground no matter what shape a wedding has or doesn’t have, or how it happens. This wedding we planned we’re un-planning and yet the planning, when it was a plan, made us fall in love all over again with this land and this view and this resource where we have the good fortune to make our home. My phone rings as I approach the river and the bench. It’s my daughter. Perfect timing. We talk about our swims and the dogs and the un-wedding we are not planning. We laugh and the river is so still, so still under the few clouds before dusk. There is birdsong and bullfrogs. There is no stress, there is peace, it’s summer and the black-eyed Susan’s are reaching for the sky.
