Why The Fern Hanging On the End of The Porch Looks Like It Is About To Die

I come from a long line of people who have spent a lot of time growing things. Not one summer of my life has slipped by without some discussion, detailed or just in passing, with some family member about the garden they are growing or the flower bed cared for with lots of time and love. Sad to say, and a bit ashamed to say, this piece of family know-how didn’t seem to make it down to me. Even a middle school stint in the Future Farmers of America didn’t help me that much in this regard. I just don’t seem to have the ability or patience to grow much of anything.

My wife is no help in all this either. She claims no green thumb. She tries and has succeeded with a few plants and some herbs but nothing very elaborate. We do try though at least on some small scale. Usually every spring, we bring home some baskets to hang on our porch. Usually somehow we end up allowing this plant life to slowly wilt away in summer’s heat. And yes, we do that even with ferns. Ferns seem to be pretty resilient. They stand a lot of heat, a lot of water and can stand some neglect. We speak from experience as we have made some nice ferns endure all three. This year four plants, two hanging baskets of petunias and two fern hanging baskets, came into our care.

While we can do enough damage on our own to hanging baskets we have found one other thing limits the growth of hanging baskets at our house. Birds, and in our neighborhood, we have lots of birds. The last few years we have been bombarded with birds from seemingly every direction and they seem to really like nesting in baskets hanging on our porch. No doubt the faulty workmanship on our chimney which allowed water to damage some siding probably also helped attract birds to our house. These winged foul would interrupt Sunday afternoon naps with their beaks bouncing off the outer shell of the chimney as they searched for bugs or as they tried to make enough of an indent into the crumbling exterior to create a hole where they might infiltrate and nest for awhile. It all was maddening and caused me to declare war on the birds in my yard although all I really could do was glare at them then snarl and plead with them to not do that anymore making me feel like a parent whose child has pitched a fit at the most inappropriate time and place while the rest of the world happens to be watching. Over this past winter, we remedied our bird problem with some extensive house repair. Since then, the neighborhood birds and I get along.

No doubt ferns everywhere were pleased with the great bird truce of 2010 as this likely increased their odds of surviving the long summer days on our porch. Surely, the thought must be that these two folks, minus the bird issue, can provide enough water and care to carry a fern’s life from scorching heat into fall’s first frost. And, honestly, we do try.

This year though, one fern is not going to make it much longer.

A few weeks back, I came home one evening and as I pulled into the driveway, rain began to fall. I rushed into the house past my wife and out to the porch. There, I lifted each hanging basket off it’s hook and sat each at the bottom of the steps so each basket could soak up some of the rain that was falling. As I placed the last basket, a fern, on the ground, I noticed a bird’s nest with three small blue eggs embedded underneath a secret veil of fern leaves. The rain began to beat down then so my instincts drove me back onto the porch and then into the house. There I began explaining to my wife the reason I rushed through the house to the porch was so that the hanging baskets might get some water this week. As an aside to her, I noted the one fern basket which a week or so earlier we realized housed a bird’s nest now had three small blue eggs in it. Jennifer then looked at me and asked me if I had left that basket in the rain. Sure, I replied, slow to grasp my own stupidity. I then walked into our living room. Through a window I saw a bird perched on the porch railing underneath where a fern hung moments earlier. The bird turned her head from side to side as if she were lost. Stupidity grasped. Without further thought I took myself out the door and into the rain where I retrieved the fern holding the bird’s nest and the three small blue eggs and returned it to it’s hook, safe on it’s perch from heavy rain or other enemies, such as human stupidity.

I have kept a closer eye on that fern and the nest since that evening. One day I noted two more eggs in the nest. Another day five tiny but ugly wads of birds were crammed into the intricate tangle of twigs and sticks constructed with a mother’s love. Now I watch that mother bird flit around the fern feeding five mouths while another fern slowly turns brown.

So, just in case you come by our house and upon inspection you see that the hanging baskets on our porch don’t look so healthy and you wonder why, well, now you know. We’re not that great with plant life, but we do try. And while our porch this year may not be quite as adorned as it could have been, I don’t mind. I understand that the sweet song of the birds speaking to one another in their native language has a beauty and richness beyond what any eye could ever see.

'Dead of Summer, Almost High Noon’

If July had it’s own clock it would read ‘Dead of summer, almost high noon’ and then it would parenthetically add, (‘during a rather long day’).

The heat of the sun reflects off the pavement and appears to bounce in slow-motion waves toward the sky. Kudzu, with green prickly vines, grows out of the scorched earth making the places and things it covers appear overgrown and snaky-looking. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers play in the background over the speakers, jangly guitars set against subtle keyboards and persistent percussion. A bead of sweat appears then rolls past my temple onto my cheek tickling my face just enough for my brain to tell my right hand to stop the moisture in it’s tracks right there. Meantime, mosquitoes and other winged invaders make a run at any exposed skin they can find, jabbing at rough skinned ankles or darting at eyes just far enough away to cause constant misery.

Sometimes in one of these moments, I am twenty years old again. It is summer break, that time between semesters when I could taste a small bit of the real world but just enough so the taste wouldn’t linger past the first day of classes in a few weeks. Here, everyone I know is young again, or at least younger. The places here are familiar but still mysterious enough to be worth visiting sometime. I feel alive. Here before me also stands the whole world just waiting for a life to get started. And I am there, kind-of-sort-of ready to start that journey but still a bit wary to venture out too far because the summer haze has set in making it difficult to see too far onto the horizon.

A sweat bee, as we called them back in that day, nips at my left ear lobe bringing me back to the here and now…crazy heat in the part of summer just before all the overgrowth, except the seemingly-eternal kudzu, dies down. A Tom Petty song jumps through my head while sweat runs down my face attracting seemingly every insect alive within a two mile radius. Here, I find myself in the middle of summer, now, in the middle of life. Still feeling very much alive, I look onto the horizon and notice the haze of a July summer has settled in like it does each year. As the heat bears down, it feels as if the summer will have no end although I know otherwise from summers past when I stood at the edge of the whole world and, unable to see beyond the haze, cautiously set out on this journey.

Still, now, I can’t help but consider whether or not July has it’s own clock. If it does, I know what it would say. ‘Dead of summer, almost high noon’ (‘during a rather long day’). And I know it would be truer today than ever before.

We Don’t Make Of Summers What We Used To

Summer’s sun stretches her gold-plated rays down from the baby blue sky and through the maze of leaves landing on the fading green blades of grass in seemingly each yard I pass by. I drive through our neighborhood squinting from time to time as those rays sometimes find their way through the windshield. During the three or four minutes it takes to make the drive from the turnoff into our neighborhood to our driveway I pass three or four dozen houses on both sides of the street. Occasionally, a sprinkler will spew water skyward then down in a rhythmic pattern across a yard as I drive by, a synchronized sport, of sorts, for the weary. Now and then, someone will be in a yard riding or pushing a lawnmower trimming the excess grass the ground has yielded since the last mowing time. Mostly though as I pass through the neighborhood, I notice most of the yards are empty.

It is summer and no one is outside.

That realization makes me a bit sad. Back in my day, summer was so much fun. Before I begin to reminisce on summer days back on red clay Georgia hills now faded into a monochrome memory I stop myself from going down that road. Maybe I am too nostalgic for my own good. Maybe I was bitten by some bug a long time ago that somehow idealizes times and places as more special than their worth to others. After all, rehashing old memories only seems to reinforce what I want to believe and while some who shared similar experiences might enjoy that trip it only seems to alienate those who can’t relate. To them I imagine they see those with other memories and experiences as out of touch with how things really are now or how they seem to really be to them. Two types of people, two types of thinking, yet more similar in how they view things than either type would ever admit. Still, the realization that summer is here and no one is outside sinks in and I can’t help but wonder why nowadays we seem to abandon summer when it finally comes.

I rarely see a natural tan anymore, one so deeply bronze I can’t help but speculate when I see one just how many hours the person wearing it has spent outdoors. No one chases and catches bugs anymore; the kind of bugs only seen in the summer, funny-shaped bugs, speckled with vivid vivacious colors and with weird antennas and more legs and wings than it seems they can easily manage. Wide, sprawling yards no longer seem to have a home plate at the edge of the walkway with first base being a rock by the driveway, second base being a shrub with funny smelling leaves at the yard’s center and third base being a tree near the edge of the woods anymore. Folks no longer go barefoot outside for any length of time other than maybe to step outside onto the front steps to briefly speak to a neighbor, and then only if they can’t find their flip-flops or house shoes, so when they do go shoeless the bottom of their feet is so tender they come hopping back into the house vowing to never step outside the house again without some form of shoe.

Yet I know, too much sun is not good for you, and neither is extreme heat. And I know some people weird out over the sight of bugs of any kind. And I know baseball can be a tedious and hot sport to play in the summer and besides someone might drop a bat on their knee and get hurt. And I know the risk of stepping on something that might really hurt is a legitimate concern, splinters and bee stings are never pleasant.

So, nowadays we flip on the TV and watch a mind-rotting “reality” show because we have hundreds of channels to choose from even if there’s still nothing worthwhile to watch. Or we open up a laptop and stick our nose there and whittle away time as if this is what we were made to do. Or we sit anxiously beside a cell phone or some other electronic device with some cool exotic name waiting for a response from a text message we sent only a minute ago frozen at the thought of doing anything else until we get a response and slowly freaking out when the response doesn’t seem to come quick enough. Or we listen to the drone of the air conditioner pumping cool air into each room of the house as it fights off any heat which may try to come into the house and wilt us into a puddle of goo while all along a voice inside us faintly contemplates why life is passing us by so quickly.

And I know the inevitability of things. I know how change comes with the passing of time. I know how every generation has to do it’s own thing and learn it’s own lessons. Seasons come, seasons go. Time marches on. Clichés become clichés because some truth rings through them.

Still, it’s summer. We’ve shaken off the chill-lined gray clouds of winter. We’ve left behind those short days of daylight where we longed for a warmer time and a sunnier day. And we got what we wished for. Isn’t this what you hoped for on December 28 when the cold rain saturated your shoes and made your feet feel like blocks of ice? Wasn’t this what you hoped for on February 2 when you mumbled and grumbled how you hoped a groundhog predicted the weather better than the professional weathermen on TV as you, without gloves, scraped a thin layer of ice from your windshield? Wasn’t it on March 11, as you dug your winter coat out of the closet again, that you imagined red Kool-Aid and fireworks and June bugs and swimming and an Independence Day picnic with hot dogs and cold watermelon? Wasn’t it then you remembered that summer days had just enough sunlight for you to do all you wanted to do in a day before darkness came for an overnight stay? Wasn’t it then that you recalled the summer sky at dusk changing colors from blue to purple to black with silver stars overhead winking at you like a shameless flirt? Shouldn’t now be the time to loosen up some? Shouldn’t it be the time to look caution square in the eye and say, take the rest of the summer off, I’ll see you in the fall? And then shouldn’t it be the time that, being the rebel you are at heart, you actually walk to the mailbox without any shoes on your feet?

My drive through the neighborhood ends as I pull my car into our driveway and then into the garage. As I unload my work gear from the day, the garage door closes behind me and I feel that crush of cool air from the air conditioning seeping into my skin like some indispensable injection intended to slow me down and keep me off my feet for awhile. Once inside the house, I locate the laptop and turn it on. Before getting cozy, I search and seize the remote control hitting the power button to open up another world; a world distant yet not quite real and just removed enough from the real life I know that I keep going back to it. Finally, I place my cell phone on the arm of the chair and make sure the ringer is turned on just in case someone tries to reach me. As the laptop boots up I flip through the onscreen guide on the TV in hopes of finding something to run harmlessly in the background so as to not distract me enough to stop me from what I am doing. Now and then, I glance at my cell phone as if my looking at it will reassure it, but more likely to reassure myself, that I am here if needed. And just before all these things come together to form the rest of the day, I can’t help but wonder why we really don’t make of summers what we used to…