Decades ago, while visiting Daughter Number One in Wyoming, I bought a pair of earrings from the artist who’d made them. I admired the elegant curves and sculptural quality of his work. So did he. “Syncline and anticline,” he said, pointing to specific parts of the jewelry.
A syncline, he told me, is a trough-shaped fold. An anticline is convex the other way. The man had formed long, tapering synclines, and used them to form anticlines. He was delighted with how the earrings had turned out. “It’s very difficult to make metal do both at once.”
I was thinking about curve formation, yesterday, as I pruned a yew bush that transitions to barberry on the lower end and boxwood at the top, in a rounded, inclined bed. Syncline and anticline are geological formations, some of them spectacularly visible in Wyoming’s rocks, and my work in the garden seemed to be progressing in geological time. It helped to think about the artist’s pleasure in curves, as I balanced on a giant rock to reach the top of the yew bush. Next up: the boxwoods.
Around the neighborhood, various plants have been partying. The many sycamores are now standing in the aftermath of bark parties, during which they throw down large pieces of their bark. They seem especially inclined to do this after a good rain. Sycamore bark doesn’t stretch as the trees grow, eventually becoming so strained that the bark cracks and comes off in large curving pieces, many of which have holes in them from the process already having happened on a smaller scale.
The upshot is the mottled appearance of the trunk and branches, and bark strewn about under the trees, in an area at least as extensive as the spread of the branches. D#1 has taken pieces of sycamore bark, and birch bark, which also sheds, back to Wyoming with her from past Michigan visits, to show the children in her classroom. The Cowboy State seems not to have trees with non-stretchy bark.
The prodigious trumpet vine by the neighborhood pool throws down blossoms. It’s been doing so for weeks, casting large, orange flowers to the sidewalk. They’re so resplendent that, every summer I pick them up to smell them, and every summer they don’t smell. Their appearance is their glory. Anne’s hostas, on the other hand, don’t have particularly showy blooms, but they smell divine.
This year’s hydrangeas are fabulous. Some of the bushes in the next block are eight feet tall, and all the bushes, no matter the height, are heavy with blossoms. One of our Annabelle hydrangeas, which feature flowers the size of softballs, produced a bloom this year as far across as a dinner plate. And color-changing hydrangeas, like our Firelights, are putting everything they have into every hue. Furthermore, they have a great, spicy scent.
A couple of puppies are livening up the area, too. The spindly-looking black one across the court turns out to be a Great Dane, and will probably grow to outweigh everyone in the house. The family has fenced the yard in honor of his arrival, and engaged in discussions as to what his name should be. That would be, some family members discussed it. The little girl did not discuss. She announced.
“His name is Burrito,” she proclaimed, no matter what other names were suggested. “His name is Burrito.” She was quite sure that that was the dog’s name, and she carried the day. “I’m actually kind of proud of her,” her mom told me. “She stuck to her guns.” Burrito was nine weeks old when he arrived, and he’s been growing like, well, a Great Dane.
Our friend Rhonda is to be seen walking a puppy these days, as well. Hers is an English Cocker. She has experience with the breed, and the puppy is gorgeous. The fur is a striking combination of black and white and grey, and she moves with an athlete’s grace. Her name is not Burrito or, as yet, anything else either. “I’m not worried about it,” Rhonda says. “There’s no hurry.”
The dog arrived with the name Latte, but she didn’t know it, and it doesn’t suit her elegant coloring. Rhonda leans toward old-fashioned people names, like Esmerelda. Lenore was an early contender, but Rhonda is still collecting suggestions. There are so many splendid possibilities. Rhonda and her friends are giving thought to the matter as we stroll with our dogs, just as I think of curves while shaping the bushes. These fleeting summer days are meant to be savored. The cicadas’ age-old song tells us that, already, half of those days are gone.
26 July 2024