Presently

The rhubarb has doubled in size in a week.

The wind has been having a serious conversation with the trees all morning. I pulled my Garden Way cart across the bumpy ground to the huge pile of soil out behind the neighboring barn. On my way back to the garden, I stopped at the mound of composting manure from the chicken houses and added a few shovels. My garden beds are nearly ready for planting. Already the peas are up in one and the seed potatoes are buried in hills in another. Every weekend I haul a little more soil and compost to the remaining beds so I can plant the rest of the vegetables at the end of the month.

Oregano, chives and garlic are growing in the herb garden. Soon it will be warm enough to plant parsley and basil. They will season my breakfast eggs and other dishes all summer long. I cut my first asparagus stalks yesterday and tonight there will be fresh rhubarb sauce for dessert.

I am waiting for June to wash the curtains and the windows and screens. I have outdoor and indoor projects planned but they're all waiting on warmer weather. I want to be able to open the windows when I paint the kitchen cabinets and I need a few consecutive days of nice weather to dig up the patio stones and level the earth beneath.  Over the years the ground has settled. Guests sitting on the far side lean precariously toward the forsythia bushes.

The daffodils have been singing their yellow songs for two weeks now. The lily and phlox stems have pushed up through the cold earth in the patio garden and the rose bushes have sprouted tiny green leaves. Violets and bloodroot blossom side by side. On a few days it's been warm enough to eat out of doors at the patio table or to lounge in my outdoor swing. Today, however, it is overcast and the wind is chilly. The weatherman said we might experience thunderstorms with hail. It put me in mind of a Vermont neighbor who, as we sat huddled on bleachers in our winter coats one June watching our sons play baseball, said, "It's so cold that if it'd rain, it'd hail." Ayup.

Violets and bloodroot are blooming on the back slopes.

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Today's prompt: Write an Event Instruction Zen Poem 

Stop by the flowers.

Feast your eyes on the colors;

Leave without picking.

Dawn To Dusk

Here, in the midst of summer, the landscape where I live is painted in shades of green and gold. In the mornings the light spills over the treetops and spreads itself in broad ribbons across the grass, touching a rose petal here, highlighting a daisy there, throwing jade-hued shadows deep under the trees that crowd the lawn. The peonies have bloomed and faded, the tulips and daffodils that filled the garden beds earlier have given way to bright pink phlox and vibrant orange lilies. The yard is dotted with specks of color – crown vetch holds up its mauve colored flower heads, scarlet geraniums spill out of their containers, yellow blanket flowers glow like little suns from their rock-edged beds.

As July slowly melts into August, the early mornings will take on a different tenor. Birds still pipe up the sun but there is less cacophony to the sound, fewer strident announcements about arrivals and territorial claims and more music for the pure joy of it. The air is heavier and calm, laden with a moisture that swirls and eddies into dawn-born ghosts. They diffuse the emerging light, turn luminous, and rise into the bluing sky until dusk calls them back to earth to spend another night among the trees.

Animals are abroad early in the morning when it is cool and the grass is still wet with dew. I hear a doe cough before I see her. Standing still, she can be mistaken for a shadow among the shadowy trees. Beside her are two spindly fawns, their coats stippled with bits of light and dark. Their eyes are huge and wondering, their ears pricked forward, their whole beings focused on signals from their mother. Beyond them, in the meadow, a lithe red fox plays jump and run with a field mouse intent on escaping. Swallows swoop and dive from the telephone lines, their feathers catching and reflecting sunbeams as they cavort. A rust-striped chipmunk, its tiny cheeks bulging, scampers across the drive in front of me and clatters away through the underbrush.

Mid-day brings an intense and humid heat that settles down heavily, making somnolence the hallmark of the afternoon. Bird chatter stills, no breeze stirs the air and the only sound is the drowsy humming of bumblebees as they butt and buzz in the lily cups. It is now that a hammock or the swimming pool look equally inviting, now when I want to spread a blanket in the shade and snooze, or find a quiet spot deep in the forest where tumbled rocks in a sun-dappled stream turn the water to woodland music.

Evening brings a welcome coolness that coaxes the mist from its sleeping places beneath the trees and along the riverbanks. It rises and weaves itself among the tall meadow grasses and settles pillow-like along the still-warm roadbeds. The setting sun pulls banners of scarlet and gold behind it and the evening sky deepens and darkens until a zillion stars light it up again.

Here, in the midst of summer, in the place where I live, everything is as it should be.