It’s quiet on the back deck this morning. I’m the first one up and enjoying the extra moments of ease and the brilliant fuchsia flowers in the big pot. Potted summer flowers on my deck and porch are among my favorite parts of summers, and this pot is self-watering so I can leave it where it is, even when I’m away.
The real marker of what’s going on for me right now is that all the potted flowers for the front of the house and the two lobelia I keep on tables on the back deck have stayed tucked into a corner of the porch all weekend. They make a lovely mass of pinks and purples and white, but ideally they’d be spread on tables and the steps and front entrance, welcoming people to the house.
When we got home from the shore a week and a half ago, I moved all the potted petunias and begonias and coleus and lobelia out into the sun. I’d put them back in a corner of the porch when I went away, because otherwise they need to be watered every day. Three days later, I was carrying them all back into the shaded corner, getting ready to go to Puerto Rico for a meeting of the National Sexual Violence Resource Center Advisory Council, one of the boards I’m staying on.
When I got home from Puerto Rico on Friday, I knew I’d be leaving again in a few days, and decided to skip the spreading of the flowers, knowing I’d just be gathering them all into the corner again, and I have enough to do as it is. David and I are headed to Lancaster, to help pick up the pieces of the wreck from his family “falling off a cliff” as he describes it. It’s no worse than what many friends of ours have managed with aging parents, but now that’s it’s here for us to manage, it feels like a lot.
So for now the flowers will continue to bloom, face out towards the west where the late sun angles in under the porch roof to reach them. Not enough to dry out the pots, but enough to keep the blossoms bright.
Grace Mattern 