Beauty - Milkweed, Clematis, Penstemon

“It is as though beautiful things have been placed here and there throughout the world to serve as small wake-up calls to perception, spurring lapsed alertness back to its most acute level.”—Elaine Scarry, On Beauty and Being Just (Princeton, 1999), 85.

After a six-day trip home to see my mother, I arrived at home yesterday evening to see the first buds on a milkweed I planted last year. 

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Also greeting me, from its perch on our sidewalk lamp post, is my  friend of 14 years standing, a clematis. Three or four times each year, it dies back then blooms again. Its most beautiful season is spring. 

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Like the milkweed, I planted the penstemon last year after completing my wall to nowhere, and, like the milkweed, it is blooming for the first time. 

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