Inchworm, inchworm
Measuring the marigolds.
Seems to me you'd stop and see
How beautiful they are.
Measuring the marigolds.
Seems to me you'd stop and see
How beautiful they are.
It was an early Schaum or Fletcher Method piano lesson. I think of it every time I see an inch worm measuring the garden. Apparently there is a bumper crop this year, dropping and hanging from the trees; a gift of the warm winter. A whole lotta measuring going on.
The trees that surround the back yard are clothed in spring green against Carolina blue skies, with subtle purple wisteria hanging high in the branches. I know the wisteria is not good for the trees, but it is beautiful. I have certainly engaged in things beautiful that weren't good for me; but to have not had the connection would have left me less the person that I am. So I enjoy the brief wisteria season. As I sit under the dogwood, its Easter white blooms giving way to green leaves, a ballet of baby moths rises in a choreographed cloud from the grass.
Carpenter bees are at work under the deck rail. I don't know what to do about them. Unlike termites, they are harmless to the structure--at least in the deck rail where I observe them. They don't consume wood; they merely drill a beautiful, near-perfectly round half-inch hole in which to lay their eggs; the female then partitions it to suit her (genius). They are big and bumbly and loud; but the males don't sting, the females rarely. They don't party, but are seen in the singular--much like me. The babies don't stick around. The riddance method is distasteful to me: fill the hole with caulk with the bee inside. They have a right to be, and I am going to let them.
A thunderstorm rumbles through in the night. It reverberates in the distance, rolling slowly closer and louder; like a freight train crescendoing up the track; its continuous, resonant echo coming, coming, coming. The rain adds its patter on the roof, the number of drops bouncing off the shingles doubling and tripling every few moments. Weaving through the percussion, a siren whines; closer, closer, closer. After many long minutes the climax arrives: booming bass, pounding rain and hail, piercing siren. It passes without pause and decrescendos to the north; going, going, going.
Had I awoken only to the storm at it height; should I pay attention to the garden only at its peak; had I not had to pull ivy in order to find the garden; if I look only at the highlights of my living, I miss the journey. And the journey is everything. Personally, I think the inch worm does see every beautiful detail of the marigold as it measures it.
Every spring is the only spring - a perpetual astonishment.
2 comments:
Thank you Getchen. My carpenter bees thank you too!
Grace
Inch worm, inch worm . . . From the book of songs from the musical about Hans Christian Anderson.
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