I can hardly move my hands across the keyboard, breathe, speak or walk.  Much less explain, tell what I see this morning in this little plot of land I have been graced with.

Got up late — past 7:00 a.m., that, for a gardener is like noon.  You want to be there in the absolute quiet, stillness, translucence, clarity, fragrance, breathlessness of a garden waking up.  Just stirring from the midnight dreams.

Rushing to make the coffee and almost crashing through the glass door to step outside. Clasping the wonderful dark and bitter brew that gives me a lift when nothing else does…especially after last night’s  decadent slightly over the top dinner…. all that  wine….not so much at dinner but all that wine I drank wandering around the garden…..

Oh the glory of the garden even now at 8:00 a.m.! Everyone must still be sleeping…….  if only they could see this lovely almost heart aching Saturday morning.  The sun sparkling on everything and everything sparkling back with  dazzling colors, scents and forms.

The first thing I see are the morning glories.  The ones most people have,  deep dark purple with pink throats.

I found the little shoots growing all over the gravel driveway sometime in May or June, and in the tomato pots earlier and transferred them into big pots and put in tall tomato cages to contain them….. now all three pots are in bloom at various stages along the driveway…. dark grapey gumball purple.  Look inside and there are magenta stars etched out like ancient cave drawings and the throat narrows down into white and the stamen like a tiny pink ballerina.   The sun shining through makes them glow like they’re burning with a deep dark secret or the greatest love, with the intense pleasure of being this shade of purple, this alive, greeting the morning with blazing trumpets… you can almost hear them sing, hear them ringing out a call for joy. They’re growing in front of a wall of pink phlox that has started to bloom, looking like cotton candy and clouds,   reminding me of everything in my grandmother’s  magic garden… perfuming the air with the fragrance of honey,  grapes,  and apple blossoms…..

And the air, the  astounding presence in the garden of this air all around me, the deliciousness of the air that is as palpable as the fish broth last night as the mint or the basil as alive as the bubbles in the pink champagne,  the fragrance the essence of this air that is so strong and so elusive yet it seems to whisper and talk and wave to me though it is not there, the air, yet I feel it on every single pore of me inside and out of me and it’s so delicious so fresh and so clean that I keep looking up and down the garden to see if there is someone or something  in the garden showering it on me from something or somewhere.  You can actually taste and feel and almost see this air the billions of particles all around you and then pouring into your lungs  and  purifying you  like pebbles in a stream.

… As I wandered about in my long black and maroon Japanese robe the air blew gently around my ankles instead of sticking to me like glue….The air itself is happy.  Not too hot not too damp not too dry.  If air could be happy this is happy air, emanating from a happy benign gentle sun that doesn’t burn but makes things grow and not stick, makes things tall and wide and fluffy, slender and thick and dangling, upright and curving, throwing in a gentle breeze like kisses, kisses everywhere in the garden to make the big bad wolf of darkness go away….

No one out, few cars, as though the air and sun and sky and mesmerized planets told them all to go away or simply to stay inside for a while.   Let the birds enjoy the peace and quiet of humanless existence.  And they are. They are dancing and flying in each and every corner of the garden.  The air buffeting them around like kites…. so light they dance on tiny branches and settle even on leaves that hold them in a gentle caress— the birds seem to know it is a good morning, a beautiful morning, a brilliant morning, the kind you get once in a thousand years…… the kind poets write about in the month of June, the kind in some sleepy village in England where Beatrix wrote her children’s stories…

I have it here right in front of my eyes and can hardly stand it, all the beauty all these birds like little happy beings for once not hiding but dancing in the very air, sitting on the roof and then sliding down like children at play, chirping now madly,flying past the blazing morning glories. Dancing and dancing in the air, twirling themselves into birdy butterflies.

The bees are buzzing about the Russian sage that is a mass of misty lavender already gone to puffiness, looking like swirling clouds rising from the sidewalk in front of my house,  and there are all kinds of strange beetles, narrow, wide, long and short, striped with spots of purple, orange and blue, tiny white butterflies going in and out of everything,  and then the monarchs too, one or two or three only, but even one is always a joy.

The black butterflies are back, dark as midnight with tiny blue markings like eyes… and oh, the cosmos, masses now blooming in deep wine  bordering on lunacy.

I can hardly sit here and keep writing and don’t know why I am writing instead of flinging myself out there, throwing myself on the ground, into the pots, on the grass, trying to grab a bird to dance and waltz and jitterbug with in this garden, grab each molecule of air and shove them into my mouth for later when the dryness comes again, the dampness, the cold— yes the cold, it was a tiny bit cold yesterday and dark and grey and drizzly… but a good light steady drizzle that finally drenched every leaf and tiny shriveled root that was begging for water these last few weeks……

You can water and water and nothing works like a rain, a gentle long and steady rain, a long cool drink for each and every living thing…. and then the morning comes shining into the world calling you with its gleaming, its brightness, its almost sugar candy  lollipop cartoon sweetness, the slow slow churning of the honey inside and the bees waiting the birds waiting the air waiting the glory there waiting waiting and waiting… come and see come and see this morning, and Rejoice!