Amantani baby

Amantani baby

in hand knit cap, Oshkosh jacket --

father, son, old, new

On Isla Amantani we are staying at a hospedaje run by an extended family. Everyone on this remote island in Lake Titicaca wears traditional attire, so it's funny to see this baby dressed in an Oshkosh B'gosh jacket below his hand knit chullo. I try to explain in my limited Spanish that I live a day's drive from Oshkosh, Wisconsin, where this jacket is made. The father, who only speaks Quechua, is as amused by my gestures as the son he is lovingly supporting.

curving back on green

curving back on green

stems, hardneck garlic scapes loop, 

curlicue, entangle

Mid-June, a host of hardneck garlic plants have sent up their stiff green stems, topped by pointy, paper white scapes. These false seed heads do not produce viable seed and divert energy from the garlic bulbs multiplying below ground. To ensure a crop of mature bulbs, you're supposed to snip off the scapes, though I find this hard to do because they are so beautiful. So before I behead the false seed heads, I enjoy their graceful gyrations as they twist and turn on their long stalks, looking like white grebes with stiletto beaks and sinuous necks. 

          The miniature bulbs inside the white husks have the same sharp flavor as fresh garlic. Popping one into my mouth makes my eyes water. By harvesting the scapes in late spring we get to enjoy that garlic taste in salad dressings and sauces long before I harvest the bulbs in late summer.

tiny green grasshopper

tiny green grasshopper,

your lush lemon daylily,

gone tomorrow

When I stoop to smell the sweet fragrance of a lemon daylily, I spot the tiniest grasshopper I've ever seen, perched on one of the upward curving stamens. It poses like a model as I take its photograph, only moving its antennas, which are twice as long as its bright green body.
          On the same stalk as the fully open blossom are the remains of yesterday's bloom and the swelling buds, each one bigger than the one below it. By tomorrow morning, today's lush lily will look like its shriveled companion, as each flower has but one day to fulfill its mission in life. 
          And the little grasshopper? Does it intend to eat the blossom before it wilts? They are certainly tasty, as the ancient Chinese discovered.
          Even the dried blossoms are beautiful, twisting in orange folds and crenelations like creative origami.

butterflies pirouette

butterflies pirouette

on the pink lips of milkweed

half closed, half open 

Early June, time for Red Milkweed, Queen Anne's Lace and Bird's-foot Trefoil to take their turn blooming. This butterfly looks like it had a close encounter with a hungry bird.

Butterflies, large and small, singly and in groups, flock to the deep pink pom poms of Red Milkweed. 

Honey bees delve into the golden coins of Bird's-foot trefoil.

And wasps explore the white doilies of Queen Anne's Lace.

bumble bee breaching

bumble bee breaching

the lure of saffron petals,

exchanging favors

The sweet-scented rose, rooted to the ground, waits with the intention to attract the services of the bumble bee. The airborne bee, randomly roaming, pursues the intention to gather nectar from blossoms. They meet, half by design, half by chance. The bumble bee, legs laden with gold dust, passes up buds and pale blooms until it lands on a deep apricot blossom. 

Perched on the ruffled petals, the bee searches for the entrance to the heart of the rose. It takes a big bee to find the opening among all those petals -- no little honey bees hovering around these roses. 

When the bumble bee locates the center of the blossom, it dives headfirst into the inner sanctum. 

They exchange favors -- the rose releases nectar to the bee, while the bee inadvertently deposits pollen from other flowers on the sticky stamens.

After long moments of probing, the bumble bee departs on its dark, transparent wings, leaving the fertilized flower to begin another cycle of waiting as the ovary swells and the petals fall away.

The Deer Meadow

The locals think I’m crazy,

re-seeding by hand,

but no one will lend us a tractor

with a three-point hitch.

Machinery’s useless anyway

for wild grass seed tangled

with bits of stems, leaves and forb corollas

that clog the drill.

The week you lie paralyzed

on a white bed in a white curtained stall,

I pace the pasture you call

the deer meadow—

pioneering in reverse, shuttling across

the once tallgrass prairie,

scattering the russet seeds in an arc

for the coltish wind.

Potpourri of wine bronze gold gathered

at Big Creek and Redfeather,

with names like the poppling song

of the mockingbird—

Tahoka daisy, goldstem grass, dropseed,

turkey foot grass, bastard toadflax,

dame’s rocket, downy sunflower, hoary puccoon,

blanketflower, rocket larkspur.

No compass plant to guide me

through the maze of corridors,

no rattlesnake-master to vanquish

the tumor swallowing your spine.

Between bouts of rain,

poison ivy, thorns,

and the lopped off stalks of goldenrod,

I stride the scalp shorn field—

dragging fifty-pound bags of chopped hay,

each handful light as fuzzy hair,

clinging to the chaff, blanketing the beds

trampled by deer.

There is an intimacy in this slow spreading,

time to find a meadowlark nest

that survived the mower, its single speckled egg

unbroken.

Space to discover, beyond the chemical waste

of corn fields and hog lots,

below the wreck and rubble, a rhapsody

of chocolate hearts

pressed into the dark and yielding mud,

a duet of the delicate

cloven feet of the cinnamon doe

tap dancing at dawn.

In your deer meadow the wind-borne seed

will sprout from its safe

confining shell, raising a tender green

alleluia.

As I drop the last clinging seed

on the bare fallow ground,

your fluttering heart emerges

from a mantle of wildflowers.

black bee, yellow bee

black bee, yellow bee,

orange butterfly and white --

sipping coneflower nectar

On one small patch of yellow coneflowers, I spot two kinds of bees and butterflies. Naturally, I recognize the yellow striped honey bee, the kind my friend keeps in square white hives, but the black bee is a bit of a mystery. 
          A little research reveals that the mystery bee is also a honey bee (Apis melifera), but the European dark bee, also called the German black bee, is a different subspecies from the Common or Western honey bee. The dark bee was actually the first honey bee brought to the Americas by Europeans in the early 1600s.
          In addition to the two kinds of honey bees, the yellow coneflowers (Echinacea paradoxa) are being visited by two kinds of butterflies, a tawny one with dark spots along the edge of its wings and a white one with an orange streak on its lower wing edge. The coneflowers, with their drooping golden petals and spiky crown, are obviously a favorite of both bees and butterflies. Both types of insects are able to probe deeply with their long proboscis into the spiky tubes that make up the flower's central disk in order to sip the hidden nectar.