Out back last night

 It's the year of the black-eyed susans out back. They're faithful, but, like their kissing cousin daisies, make a show of it for a while and then leave their green stems behind, like weeds. I'm not complaining. I wouldn't know about such things, but they're like seeing another woman (or man). When they're in bloom they're a dream, but they do fade fast. Daisies and blackeyed susans have taken over the back yard, endless echelongs, like the mythical Chinese army. That bright sunny smile they give to just about everything is worth their shortness of breath. 

They're hot right now, and--don't get me wrong--I love 'em. But they fade fast.

But it's gorgeous out back right now, thanks to the TLC my spouse dispenses, this despite the fact that last October she swore off gardening all together and forevermore. With an infirm husband who can't bend or kneel or sit on his butt on the ground, she's the sole force behind all of this magnificence, this gorgeous extravagance I can't help but love out back.

It's hard to know what the rest of our rustic prairie looks like out back. Consistent inch-and-a -half rains turned the world pure emerald out there, makes everything grow. My gardener/wife complains that the weeds are loving all that measured  moisture, but I just don't see them--all those daisies and black-eyed susans are a carpet--and we have yet to see a coneflower, whose time it was last year. 

I risked it last night, pulled out my new riding lawn mower, hitched up the wagon, and just tootled out into the wild frontier of our out back acre. The paths were almost gone--in a decade living out here, I've never seen anything like it, the brome grass has overgrown everything, so much that my heart leaped to see this gargantuan cup plant  (a kind of sunflower) rising like a conquerer from what it left itself last summer. Cup plants are big and colorful at about the time everything else has thrown in the towel on flowering. 

I could hardly get through the monster brome, whose seed heads are so heavy they take the plants down over the path of the mower. It's impossible--I don't know that I'll see any color in our prairie. The whole prairie seems nothing but brome.

Well, almost. I finally dragged my weariness outside and into the tall grass wilderness last night, to a place where I couldn't help see a native that would be (and is) horrifying, if it didn't raise such amazing blossoms.

That's tomorrow. 

As for me? I made it back in without catastrophe :).