The increasingly-tumultuous weather we’ve had of late has coaxed a couple of azaleas into bloom, far from their typical blooming season. The throwback to spring is bittersweet given the late hour of this summer, but I paused to look at this anomaly, enjoying memories of when it all began. Spring feels very distant. Summer does too, even if we’re still in it. 

There is danger here, especially if these buds were intended for next spring. I would never rob the future for a momentary jolt of pleasure in the present. 

The garden has been quietly busy of late, with our cup plants and butterfly bush providing fertile feeding and pollinating ground for the birds and bees and a hummingbird as seen here. Both continue in their long blooming period, allowing for enjoyment by these visitors that will last through the start of winter. The bees and insects will depart first for the season, then the hummingbirds will go – only the finches will keep coming back into the slumber time. 

The gardens have been wanting to go to sleep for a while now. I stopped fertilizing and feeding them a few weeks ago. Once the ostrich ferns take that turn to brown, it is senseless to try to keep things going and growing. The only things I keep feeding are the container plants, as they will require the nutrients for as long as we want them to be presentable. Let us not be too quick to overlook the importance of these plants in the fall. Cool nights don’t mean an instant end to the pageantry. Not yet… 

In the meantime, the birds and the bees are still humming along…

A rustling and a scuffle, held high above the ground where such things usually take place, drew my attention to the crux of the Eastern white pine and a coral bark Japanese maple tree. A pair of squirrels quarreled or played in the arms of the latter, sending a few maple leaves fluttering to the floor, before they charged into the feathery planes of the pine boughs. What could have caused such a tussle? The curiosity into the lives of squirrels takes me blessedly out of the day, and anything that takes us out of ourselves is a good thing. How many hours have I spent self-fucking the ego? Surely enough for a lifetime. 

Let us look to the trees, and beyond to the sky, to figure out ourselves through detachment and distance. It all goes around and comes around, and around and around we go…

Surviving another year on this crazy-ass earth is no mean feat, even if most of us still living have done it for as many years as we’ve been here. Saying a great deal of nothing with a maddening cadence of words has become this blog’s stock in trade. On with this post-birthday recap of the week that I turned 49…

A coquette cradle song fit for a fit of crying. 

A gratuitous Glen Powell armpit post, for those who admire such scenes. 

When fall arrives, a coquette summer departs.

Helianthus wet and wild – little faces of sun that refuse to be drowned. 

Bark and structure – the architecture of the garden.

Coquette queens.

A birthday on the cusp of many things.

Feeling all of my 49 years.

The post-birthday sigh of relief.

Dazzlers of the Day included Catherine O’Hara, Tim Walz, and Todd Alsup.

I made it through the wilderness… somehow I made it through. Another birthday finished, assuming things go relatively well (at the time of this writing I am still a baby-like 48) it’s a day to take pause, and the only thing blue is the color of these salvia blooms. Let’s have a quiet Sunday morning, and bring that calm into the week. 

The body is weary.

The body is worn.

The body is bruised, achy and torn. 

This is 49, and it comes after a ferocious summer that took my back out, strained my neck, gave me a second go-round with COVID, and battered me down in numerous other ways unnoticeable to the naked eye. The body betrays us the older we get, even as we struggle to protect it. 

After revisiting this date 49 times, one would think I’d have a better grasp of how things should go, of what I’m supposed to be doing. Strangely, with each passing year, I’m discovering that the older I get the less I understand – and there is growing wisdom in that realization and acceptance. 

And so I look back with the indulgence that only a birthday can socially sanction (not that I’ve ever denied myself an indulgence on any of the other days). It begins with #48, the uneventful birthday of last year, during the end of a summer that didn’t feel like it would ever end. For #47, it seemed fitting to slip into my birthday suit – a tradition that was part of #46 in a quieter way. During the quiet first year of COVID, #45 stripped things down to basics, harkening to a vintage-tinged past. 

Donning a different sort of birthday suit for #44, and the traditional one, and following a couple of summers (and birthdays) off from blogging, things picked up as we skipped to the joyous #41, and the equally-lovely #40. Ten years ago found birthday #39 quietly passing in a New York night. A most basic birthday suit post formed the entry for #38, and that seems as fitting a way to end things on this day. I’m tired.