{"id":3793,"date":"2016-04-03T19:42:44","date_gmt":"2016-04-04T01:42:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/?p=3793"},"modified":"2016-04-03T19:42:44","modified_gmt":"2016-04-04T01:42:44","slug":"observations-from-a-spring-afternoon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/2016\/04\/03\/observations-from-a-spring-afternoon\/","title":{"rendered":"Observations from a Spring Afternoon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After dinner, I sat in the zen-zone in the late afternoon.<\/p>\n<p>The slanting light lit our front yard project in a golden glow: the\u00a0Purple Trailing Lantana struggling to come back from the wet year we had last year, the <em>Mealy Blue Sage<\/em> with new purple spikes just emerging, the <em>Bluebonnets<\/em> along the curb, the <em>wild Primrose<\/em> that my mom brought back from the Wildflower center years ago, the Suess-like <em>Pin Cushion Daisy<\/em> that successfully multiplied from one to three or four, the everlasting <em>Golden Eye<\/em> that blooms in October and due to this year\u2019s warm winter has never completely stopped, the <em>Coreopsis<\/em> in the shade of the Monterey Oak with its yellow blossom on a curling stem searching for the sun, the yellow-flowered <em>Tropical Milkweed<\/em> that has faithfully blossomed year after year never to see a Monarch, the dense batches of <em>Purple Coneflowers<\/em> standing upright, the <em>Spiderwort<\/em> that has been the pride our our yard this year, the low-growing <em>Four Nerve Daisy<\/em>, the purple <em>Prairie Verbena<\/em> that is beginning to spread, the <em>traditional Sage<\/em> that just put out light purple spikes last week, the <em>Salvia Gregii<\/em> in white and pink and coral and red, the yellow <em>Zexmenia<\/em>, the yellow <em>Engelmann\u2019s Daisy<\/em>, the <em>Cowpen Daisy<\/em> a few of which are still blooming from last summer even as new ones are just poking up from under the leaf litter, the <em>Wright\u2019s Skullcap<\/em> with purple blossoms happier than I\u2019ve ever seen them thanks no doubt to the loving care of Chachi Bette weeks ago, one white Iris blossom the last of the <em>Irises<\/em> that have been blooming continuously since December and the <em>Coral Honeysuckle<\/em> growing on the trellis on the side of the house.<\/p>\n<p>The air was full of flying things, bees and flies and mosquito hawks and little gnatty watchamacallems. Silver strands of spiderweb silk glowed in the light of the setting sun. And a butterfly was fluttering around, visiting each <em>Coneflower<\/em>, black and orange wings opening and closing slowly from its perch atop the orange pokey things that crown each coneflower flower. It would stay there for a moment and then launch again into the air, flying in a wide circle, returning after a while to the next <em>Coneflower<\/em>, repeating this cycle from flower to flower until every blossom had been visited, or perhaps until the sun had set sufficiently low and it was time to go.<\/p>\n<p>The fair and industrious Trudy sat down beside me, returning from the task of fertilizing and watering the tomatoes in the back.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis has been the best spring we\u2019ve ever had,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>Indeed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After dinner, I sat in the zen-zone in the late afternoon. The slanting light lit our front yard project in a golden glow: the\u00a0Purple Trailing Lantana struggling to come back from the wet year we had last year, the Mealy Blue Sage with new purple spikes just emerging, the Bluebonnets along the curb, the wild [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3793"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3793"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3793\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3794,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3793\/revisions\/3794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}