Summer in Yellow, Red and Green
After flowering the hillsides and the plain, spring has fled to other horizons,
Waving in a final shudder, the blond wheat ears are ready for the harvest,
Under the heat of the lead the ballet of the harvesters enters the blond dance,
Letting the precious gold flow in the trailers, the balloons adorning the fields of round bullets.
Its flowers scattered in vermillion splendor brighten up our campaigns,
The poppy, this prince of the fields, adorns meadows and roadsides,
On its cylindrical and hairy stem, above the thin, highly cut leaves,
The flower with the bright red petals carries in its center the ovary with the cap of black striated.
Honeybee plant, bees the butine to collect pollen on its blue-black stamens,
A messenger, Claude Monnet has put it in the spotlight in his summer "red cornfields"
Medicinal plant since the Middle Ages it is lent sleeping and antitussive virtues,
Antan he gave color to the rural landscapes and blushed the wheat of his massive splash.
Elegant and robust, blooming the wasteland, the banks of the streams and the embankments of the boroughs,
The evening primrose plays the beautiful at night, its yellow flower suffers only in the evening and fades during the day,
On its angular stem exceeding one meter, new buds hatch the next day,
In that formerly called "the gardener's ham" for the color of its carmine roots.
In the vineyards after a sulky and damp spring, the winemaker fears illness,
The time of the sprays has struck to fight mildew and powdery mildew or white,
At dusk on windless evenings he protects the vine against emboldened parasites,
Against the mildew he uses the Bordeaux mixture, against the white he uses the remedial suffer.
At the end of the spring, the effusion had suppressed the infertile branches called "gourmands"
The vine-grower, in his treed vineyards, joins the young twigs against the iron wires in rank,
To contain its growth it crops or tufts the vine leaves avoiding to be too bushy,
After blossoming, thinning will remove the supernumerary clusters before they come to maturity.
At the summer orchard, the apricots of the heart are suns candied in the mouth of time,
Bergeron or Red Roussillon, sheltered from the foliage they have muriated slowly,
Piqued with sunshine, ravishing and pulpy, they offer in their hands their shapely curves,
These kings of summer, when flames the heat, real juicy globes melt under the tooth.
With its leathery oval and glazed leaves, with clearer haloed cuffs,
The boxwood has become the icon of the topiary art in hedges, massifs or isolated subjects,
In ancient Rome he decorated the villas, adorning the lawns by his animal forms,
From Versailles to Eyrignac and Marqueyssac, gardeners fashion brilliant boxwood embroideries.
In the Christian religion, it is used during the ceremonies giving it the name of "blessed wood"
But he is lent multiple virtues to ancestral pagan origins without denial,
Thrown into the hearth of the chimney he would remove the thunderbolt and the storm,
Fixed at the doors of the houses or on the crucifixes, he would cast out the evil eye of misfortune!
Its hard and dense wood is particularly prized for sculpture and turning,
Of a beautiful yellow color its fine grain is worked with great precision,
It is the wood of which one makes the flutes, the pieces of game of chess, the grains of rosary out of age,
In the Périgord, it is used to make the hoof-sleeves of Nontron's knives.
In the spring the shrub is covered with tiny flowers to the white shell color,
Gathered in glomeruli loaded with pollen and nectar they are the paradise of working bees,
As for fruits in summer, their capsule contains perfumed seeds attracting ants,
It is through myrmecochory that they will favor the spread of the plant, its zoochory.
But the boxwood has recently known its pest of parks, a butterfly from Asia,
Nocturnal species with white and brown wings and golden iridescence, it is the box moth,
The females lay the eggs on the leaves, as soon as they are hatched the caterpillars nibble the verdure,
The shrubs quickly resemble dried, bleached lace, a sad look.
Recognizable by their bright green bodies streaked with dark green and their shiny black heads,
In one month, fed with foliage, they reach the 5 cm of their imposing adult size,
After becoming numb, they metamorphose into chrysalis within the remaining branches,
Three weeks later the butterflies hatch and the cycle restarts, renewing 3 times a year.
To eradicate them, avoid chemical insecticides that are dangerous to jubilant pollinators,
The small caterpillars can be picked manually and offered to the tits that adore them,
By striking the boxwood with a stick, sensitive to vibrations, they will fall like meteors,
Saving thus this sacred tree of ancient Greece, symbol of the reviviscence of the species.
Here is an indefatigable miniature drone with gray chestnut brown body, foraging everything that carries corolla,
Butterfly with orange wings, it refuels thanks to its hover and it is the day that it flies,
Topped by antennas in the shape of a club, its head has strange round eyes,
Its long trunk allows the sphinx hummingbird to go to fetch the nectar at the bottom of the deep limbs.
Let's take advantage of this summer, very close to my village, where a little brook flows under the foliage,
Let us admire this bubbling wave which, falling from the rocks, seems to enchant us,
Let us listen to them roar in a frightening voice, run in the stream, chirp and sing,
At a time when the sun is flaming the setting sun on the hill, like a volcano teeming with scarlet on the horizon.
L’ ARIÉ…JOIE