The coneflowers continue to flourish.

The garden is two or three years away from filling in, and that's if I've chosen well. 

The joe-pye weed is slowly forming blooms and taking on color. There isn't much noticeable change day by day.

I thought that the New England aster died last year, so its bloom caught me surprise. 

The hellenium will be blooming soon. It's common name is sneezeweed. We shall see how many sneezes it triggers. 

Left: William Desmond, photographed on March 15, 2018, at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth.


I'm currently reading Wonder Strikes, a book on the philosopher William Desmond by Steven Knepper: "Tragedy chastens systematic philosophy, with its confidence in the comprehensive power of the logos and its tendency to abstract from the particular into categories or concepts. Systematic philosophy often excludes first-person experience. The experience of the philosopher is hidden behind 'an impersonal universal system' (Beyond Hegel and Dialectic, 163). Philosophers who hear Lear’s howl and see him carrying the body of Cordelia, who fully reckon with being at a loss, will be left questioning their systems’ ability to account for such loss. They will be confronted with the impossibility of words ever doing it justice." [Knepper, Steven E. Wonder Strikes: Approaching Aesthetics and Literature with William Desmond (p. 255). State University of New York Press. Kindle Edition.]

If tragedy challenges the generalizations of philosophy, literature itself can challenge the generalizations used to characterize it. Here's a quotation I lifted many years ago from a biography of the French thinker Pierre Duhem: "Auguste Angellier (1841-1911) completed his doctoral dissertation on the poetry of Burns. Duhem most likely heard Angellier argue its principal thesis: abstract categories are useless for literary criticism which rather must take account of the ‘immense complexity of things, of their inextricable confusion, and of their apparent contradictions’ (see ‘Angellier’ in Dictionnaire de biographie francaise, 2:1073). This reminder of the complicatedness of the historical record could strike but responsive cords in Duhem.” [Stanley L. Jaki, Uneasy Genius:  The Life & Work of Pierre Duhem. Boston: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1987, Page 85, note 50.]

Lance-leaved loosestrife, a native east of the Mississippi. The pictures were all taken in the last couple of days. All of these plants were sold by the nurseries as native plants. 

The flowerhead of the joe-pye weed is forming very slowly, with a faint flush in the center promising color to come.

A native catchfly. The granules are nontoxic and intended to keep passing critters from eating the blooms. 

A blurry picture of the first buds spotted on native honeysuckle. I hope there will be better pictures to follow.