Doc and I sat on the porch and inhaled this storm, one of the many which have hammered the 14th colony over the past six weeks. Thanks, or no thanks, to the 'net, we can obsessively watch the weather as it slides into the Hudson Valley, pauses and then lunges across the river into Connecticut. Twice the storms rolled noisily out to sea, turned and came back as three-day nor'easters.
I think the storm above looks like the last act of Gotterdammerung, an explosion of darkness and thunder.
This is the rosebush behind our house, one of the original climbers, Dr. Van Fleet. Its root stock is so strong that it's used to propagate other types. It has a mind of its own, canes thick as baseball bat handles and thorns like dragon's teeth. The canes arch up and over and root in whatever they can find. No wonder it's a survivor.
In spite of all this rough and tumble, Dr. Van Fleet is a perfect, many-petaled, chunky blossom with a rich, spicy scent. The color is faint pink with deeper tints inside the bloom. And it goes and goes and goes. It's on its fourth week this year, because of the rain and the cool. In a hot July the blossoms arrive, sigh and faint away, littering the grass with petals as soft as baby's skin.
The bush is a safe haven in any season for birds and the chipmunk scouts who watch and wait along the stone wall. There is a bobcat in the neighborhood and all the smaller animals are on alert, staying close to the house where people are. The proximity of humans doesn't seem to bother this bobcat, however. One morning we found him drinking from the birdbath, 10 feet from our back door. We had to shout at him to make him leave. Rocky stays close, as cats in their later years usually do, unwilling to risk as he once did.
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