Small things lately, July

•  I’m taken lately by the blues of larkspur flowers and the way that the petals appear dip dyed in indigo, lighter and darker, one dip or two, streaked with the occasional stripe of white or lavender. Their petals are tiny impressionist or post-impressionist paintings—the colors the exact ones I always associate with mountains and Montana, Monet and Matisse. Larkspur, or delphinium, are the flower of July which is something I’ve always forgotten, and never managed to watch bloom and grow until this summer. 

• I’m taken too with how mint grows wild and tall. Towering from its pot on the picnic table its tallest branches get caught each time I raise and lower the patio umbrella. Every evening I gently cup and sweep these branches out  to the side in a movement I’ve made many more times throughout the day as I gather my hair with one hand and place it over my shoulder when the sun is strongest. 

• The tomatoes are also summer sun fiends inching skyward up the lattice, braiding their vines as they go so you can no longer discern where one plants begins and another ends. They grow up, while the strawberry vines creep down—fruits of a feather intertwining together. 

• I’m noticing these moments of growth differently, or in a way I haven’t before. I find myself noting the way the blooms cycle through late spring and into summer, and which ones do and don’t overlap—lilacs give way to peonies, peonies to larkspur, and the larkspur to hydrangeas, cosmos and gomphrena. I watch too as the zucchini blossoms open and close—each taking its turn, only blooming for a morning, before twisting in on themselves, mimicking the whorl of a croissant, or seashell.