The Phone Says the Picture Was Made May 9th

The phone says the picture was made May 9th, a Monday (I had to look that up). I strung up the garden lights last spring. Around the apple tree, then the grape arbor, which it shares with the honeysuckle.

The first night of those lights brought out something otherworldly in the Piers japonica, now ghost-like in its shimmering stillness, an effect that enhances the trees around it -- the two tall cedars, the mountain ash, the balsam leaning in. They have gathered like crows to protect the simp after it is pushed from the nest and encouraged to fly.