This morning it's incredibly quiet and still. I spent the better part of it pruning—-I am amazed at how wild everthing has become. The rose of sharon bush is getting crud from it’s next door neighbor the choke cherry tree, so I trimmed both back. The bees hovered nervously as I cut back their meal ticket, the blooms of the rose of Sharon. Below, the bee balm has creeped in to the foot path and as I trimmed it back, I found it had taken over a foot. We ended up sawing down a sizable offshoot of the choke cherry, as well. Here we upset the catbirds who swallow down the dark purple choke cherries greedily, hopping from branch to branch to pick the choicest ones. I tried to attack the garden and restore some order to the tomato plants, but it’s pointless. It’s my fault I planted them so close together in the first place. After picking a few tomatoes—I hear they are slow to ripen this season—I inspected the cucumbers. They are prolific. I have to start making pickles.

There is no breeze but it’s not hot due to the thick cover of patchy clouds in the sky. I walked down to the dock to cut back all the growth down there. I brought my binoculars and was rewarded: a great egret fishing. I’ve seen it twice before already, stone still and beautifully, strikingly white, the only match being the water lilies that dot the pond.

I chopped back as much as I could and rewarded myself with a seat on the bench. The view is now obstructed by the purple loosestrife, tall and willowy, a bright shock of tiny purple flowers lining the top two feet so that when there are fields of it it’s a waving wash of purple. I wanted to put boots on and to wade out and chop them all back, but I was stopped by the constant buzz of what I soon realized to be hundreds of bees buzzing in the flowers, and I decided to stop chopping and leave to bees to their business.