THAT GREEN FUSE*

*  “The force that though the green fuse drives the flower

              Drives my green age…”

A peony enjoying the sun

June again!  When everything green is thick with growth and the exuberant ripeness of reproduction.  It is a veritable frenzy of egg-laying and pollination.   Outdoor surfaces are coated with the yellowish dust of pollen from trees and grasses.  Car windshields are streaked with it.   

Other peony buds look ready to explode

On our front porch the new avian tenants are two barn swallow families, back from wintering somewhere in South America.  Before humans built barns and the like they would have been called cave swallows, like the swallows out west that still bear that name.  Swallow nests are wonderful constructions:  built upon barely half an inch of base (they sometimes build upon no base whatever but attach to a vertical wall) the nests cantilever out in semi-circular fashion.   

Both swallow parents build the nest with mud and mix it with grass stems. The cup is lined first with grass, then feathers.  Sometimes they reuse nests, but at the end of last season Ken cleaned up their droppings and took out the old nest.  I think this year we’ll leave it.  (Last year we had one grosbeak nest, and one swallow nest on our porch.)  The location of one nest is in exactly the same place as last year’s.  One of the two sets of parents made a first nesting attempt directly overhead by the front door.  What gave it away was the daily flinging of mud on our front door.   We didn’t relish being dive-bombed every time we used the doorway, not to mention the constant irritant that would provide to the birds.  

One parent sits on a nearby light fixture while the other tends the nest above

They are busy parents, ignoring most of our activity on the front porch to fly back and forth to watch their nests and now–maybe–to feed their chicks.  Their diet is flies of all types, along with beetles, bees, wasps (more power to them!), ants, butterflies, moths and what-have-you.  They look especially busy in early evening as they dip low over the pond to snatch mosquitos or other insects.  

Two hungry mouths.  No three!  (Actually five!)  [Photo thanks to Bob Norland]

The weigela is in bloom along the side of the porch

Hummingbirds that arrived the first two weeks of May are hurrying among the red-flowering weigela and the nectar feeders.  When the wiegela is done flowering they will be even busier around the feeders.  Finding where they nest is not easy; their nests are so tiny and their movements so fast it’s nearly impossible to find where they alight much less locate their nest.  

[Photo thanks to Bob Norland who has become expert at photographing hummingbirds]

The seed-filled feeder behind the house has already had its spring visitors:  first the titmice, the finches, nuthatches and woodpeckers and others followed by brilliant gold finches that ornamented the shrub near the feeder some thirty at a time, followed by grosbeaks, more woodpeckers and now, alas, we are settling for sparrows, some finches, and (ugh!) starlings.

A yellow swallowtail among the dianthus

A Common Whitetail (Libellula Lydia) dragonfly (center) atop a blade of tall grass

I have planted the summer vegetables.  There are fewer of them than last year, when I had put in far too many grape tomato plants, too many jalapenos (what do you do with a dozen jalapenos?) and too many squash plants, a disappointment when they cover plenty of ground but don’t do much in the way of edible squashes).  The year before it was a surfeit of eggplants.  Hard to get this just right.  

It looks better now, but this was the sunflower section earlier.  Which ones are the weeds?

This year there will be a slightly extended flower garden and more sunflowers instead.  I can almost hear it all growing.  Weeds, especially.  The enthusiasm with which weeds grow here is nothing short of amazing.  Once sprouted they lock themselves into the hard clay and refuse to be pulled out.  Or leave roots behind––hah!

In the fields the grasses are already approaching two feet in height.  They probably won't be mowed until later in the summer because the low places, the swales, are still too wet..  

Everywhere: growth, and more growth, sprouting, blooming, multiplying, aging.

The Force That through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower

Dylan Thomas

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower   

Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees   

Is my destroyer.

And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose

My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

The force that drives the water through the rocks   

Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams   

Turns mine to wax.

And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins

How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.

The hand that whirls the water in the pool

Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind   

Hauls my shroud sail.

And I am dumb to tell the hanging man

How of my clay is made the hangman’s lime.

The lips of time leech to the fountain head;   

Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood   

Shall calm her sores.

And I am dumb to tell a weather’s wind

How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.

And I am dumb to tell the lover’s tomb

How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.

POSTSCRIPT:

Should you happen to remember the March post called "Local Issue":   The removal of the old and dysfunctional Middlebury Town Offices and its replacement, with financial support from Middlebury College, will happen after all.  The second vote or revote took place while we were in London.  For now, things have quieted.