Friday Five: Admiring the Morning

First, a caveat: This is a Friday 6, not 5. 

As I sat at the table this morning, the sky was cloudy and things looked a bit dull. I forked up my last bit of egg and avocado, and then - the sun burst through, and compelled me to go outside. I poured myself a mug of tea, slung my camera around my neck, and stepped out into the morning. 

Oh, what a morning! No noble lady strolling her vast estates could take more joy in seeing the day's delights than I in my little urban bit of garden. God's wonders are everywhere.

I notice the oregano will flower soon, so I'll cut it back tomorrow, drying the stalks on trays before stripping the leaves and storing them in jars. The bees enjoy the flowers so much, and I'll leave a patch of stalks for them. Blue campanula peeks from underneath the oregano.  

The Secret Roses smell wonderful and bloom repeatedly, although they are mottled this year, with splotches of odd colour. Perhaps they absorbed some of the peony colour blooming behind them and looking rather tattered these days. It's time to clip those stems! 

Circling round the flower beds, I come to the blueberry patch, an ambitious name for a collection of 5 or 6 bushes. They are loaded with berries this year. What delight to see the first ones begin to ripen. We've had a few cooler weeks that slowed things down, but heat is in the forecast and will speed the ripening.

I stand and gawk at the jasmine vine for a considerable length of time. It's loaded with tiny fragrant blossoms and obscures the trellis supporting it. My inaction is in sharp contrast to the busyness of bees, wasps, and other flying things darting in and out of blossoms, oblivious to my attempts to capture them on my camera. 

When I looked at the photos later, I noticed this fat bumblebee balancing himself with one leg resting on an adjoining vine as he drinks sweet nectar. He was there less than 2 seconds.

In the vegetable patch the pole beans are finally sprouting. I planted them late and then the cool weather came. Beans like warmth. What pleases me most about my pole beans is that I've saved seed for several years and never purchase it anymore. Beans have a way of getting too big too fast and at the end of the season when I'm tired of picking them green, I let them ripen and dry on the vine, then shell them. Some are saved for seed and the others for dried bean dishes. 

My tea mug empty, my eyes and heart full, I return to the house and notice this caterpillar on the door frame. What magnificent spiky parasols he sports.  I snap the photo and then let him be, an action I may regret later when I see leaves and flowers chewed up. 

Now, I'm off to school - there are papers to grade and reports to write, as well as students to teach. There is precious little teaching going on these days as we review for tests and try to harness the energy as summer break approaches. The teachers drag through the hallways, exhausted, while students bounce up and down. Just three days of classes left. We can do it.